New Courtauld Affiliates Membership Ensures Full Value Chain Representation to Achieve Food System Transformation

The Courtauld Commitment 2030 has expanded its reach with a new Courtauld Affiliates membership, developed to enable businesses who are part of the Food System, but don’t manufacture or retail food and drink, to support its transformation.

The first to become Courtauld Affiliates include Apeel, Deliveroo, Google, Nutritics, OLIO and Panasonic UK.

Helen Bird, Head of Business Collaboration, WRAP, said “The goods we consume, the food we eat and the clothes we wear contribute to nearly half of all global emissions; it has never been more urgent to tackle this. The delivery of Courtauld 2030 targets will result in a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions related to food & drink, as well as reductions in waste and water stress from the UKs food system. It is only through the convening of the full value chain that we can achieve this, and our Affiliates membership opens the door to many more businesses and brands to collaborate to reach these targets.”

The Courtauld Affiliates membership has been created to enable WRAP to engage with commercial businesses who can support and influence the achievement of the GHG, water and food waste targets. WRAP will create individual action plans and tailor its support to ensure each Affiliate business can maximise its own unique contribution.

Jessica Vieira, PhD, VP Sustainability, Apeel "By working together with WRAP as part of the new Courtauld Affiliates programme, we can build and expand partnerships that accelerate Apeel’s impact on household food waste, making it easier for food businesses and consumers to contribute directly to the Courtauld 2030 targets. Our ambition is to improve supply chain resilience by ensuring growers, distributors, and retailers can address the obstacles that lead to wasting significant quantities of nutritious food. When produce with Apeel’s plant-based protection is more widely available, we can ensure more people are getting longer-lasting, fresher, perfectly ripened produce on every trip to the grocery store, leading to less waste, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and more enjoyment of the food we grow.”

Paul Bedford, Director of Policy and Sustainability at Deliveroo, "Offering the best possible food experience in your local area goes hand in hand with operating in a more sustainable way, so we're delighted to become an Affiliate signatory of the Courtauld Commitment 2030 to help drive collective action. We want to play our part in reducing food waste and reducing our carbon footprint, and we look forward to working with WRAP to deliver lasting change across our sector”.

Google spokesperson, “As a long-standing partner of WRAP, Google Food is pleased to join as an Affiliate Member of the Courtauld 2030. With our mutual focus on reducing food waste and cutting carbon, we’re looking forward to sharing our insights, learning from each other and accelerating progress.”

Stephen Nolan, the managing director of Nutritics “We are on a remarkable sustainability journey and our decision to become a Courtauld Affiliate and participate in the UK Food Waste Reduction Roadmap showcases both our passion and dedication to the cause. Sustainability needs to become integrated into all aspects of a business, across all operations, roles and strategies. The Courtauld Commitment 2030 provides an opportunity for us to work collaboratively with other Courtauld Affiliates and influence the entire UK food chain to deliver reductions in food waste, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water stress. This in turn will accelerate transition to a sustainable future, particularly in the hospitality and food service sector.  It’s a big challenge but an exciting one, and we can’t wait to get stuck in and continue to contribute towards both the UK and international environmental goals”.  

Tessa Clarke, co-founder and CEO of OLIO “We're incredibly excited to be joining the Courtauld 2030 Commitment as a signatory. We're deeply passionate about WRAP's aims to bring about a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030, as well as its targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water wastage. Our Food Waste Heroes Programme exists to help businesses get to zero edible food waste - rescuing perfectly good food from over 5,000 sites per week and turning it into meals - so this feels like a very fitting partnership. We're delighted to be working alongside WRAP and its coalition of businesses to achieve such an important set of shared goals. 

Sammy Dell, European Product Marketing Manager for Kitchen Appliances at Panasonic UK, “Panasonic UK is proud to be supporting the fantastic work of WRAP, and collaborating to show how small changes in our homes, specifically kitchens, can make a big difference to the world we live in. Our joint vision surrounding easy and effective methods to reduce food waste and make cost-saving decisions makes for an exciting partnership for 2022, and beyond”.

New Scope 3 Database released

The renewed interest in joining Courtauld 2030 has been driven in large part by the development of new WRAP support for businesses in measuring GHG Scope 3 emissions.

In May, WRAP released new GHG Protocols to support the sector, and a key resource has now been added to WRAP’s suite of resources on Scope 3 Emissions as the climate action NGO publishes its GHG Emissions Factor Database - uniquely tailored to food and drink purchases.

Food and drink businesses currently rely on emission factors to convert purchases into GHG data (forming part of their scope 3 emissions). To date there has been a lack of clarity and consistency surrounding these emissions factors for food and drink. WRAPs tools and guidance are addressing this inconsistency, enabling the sector to act, monitor progress and identify hot spots for individual or collective action on a level playing field. 

The new database provides emission factors for around 1,300 unique food products based on product category and country of origin. It is the first database of its kind to be tailored to food and drink anywhere in the world, and the detail means that it is the most accurate way of applying appropriate emissions factors to the produce being bought.

The release comes with growing widespread acknowledgement of the importance reliable data has on measuring the environmental impacts of food products, and how this could play a role in helping consumers make important environmental decisions when purchasing their food.