Food waste and food poverty are two really big issues. In London, for example, an estimated 9 million meals are missed each month by individuals in poverty while food for 13 million nutritious meals is wasted by manufacturers, retailers, restaurants and the hospitality industry.

There appears to be an obvious win-win solution: redistribute food surplus to those unable to afford food.

But we know that charitable food aid provision such as surplus food redistribution does not stop hunger from happening in the first place. It’s widely agreed by third sector organisations that an emergency food parcel, whether it is made up of surplus food or not, can provide temporary relief but cannot possibly address the root causes of food poverty.

And so we need to disentangle the food surplus and food poverty problems, for real change to happen. Both require systemic solutions: with food waste tackled by preventing it in the first place and food poverty addressed through a better social security system and by paying people a Real Living Wage.

Ahead of this year’s Stop Food Waste Day, on April 30, Carbon Copy has taken a separate look at food surplus and at the different ways for people to prevent food waste – at home, in their community and at work.

Collectively, the UK throws away around 10 million tonnes of food a year, and whilst much of this waste happens in households, there are other parts of the food supply chain where surplus is a persistent issue. For example, speaking on the Carbon Copy Podcast, Kate Page, Sustainability Manager at London-based corporate catering business Fooditude, explains why over-ordering food is such a problem:

“People really like having food for show. It’s still quite a big issue and people don’t really seem to understand… If food is put out on tables, and fewer people eat than expected, it then can’t be redistributed because of food safety regulations.”

Food waste is created whenever there is too much at any given point in the supply chain; whether it’s a glut of a certain crop that gets left in the field, over-supply of a packaged product in a supermarket, or food that has been served at a function. While preventing food waste is the first and best course of action, ensuring that any food surplus is used for good is the next best thing. For example, FareShare, the national charity supporting the UK’s network of charitable food redistributors. FareShare’s 18 independent regional branches source food from across the entire supply chain – from big supermarkets to manufacturers and even directly from farmers.

Balancing the cost of food surplus redistribution with the perceived value of the food can be a challenge; unfortunately, in many cases it costs less for perfectly edible food to be thrown away than for FareShare to take and distribute it to places where it can be used. In these cases, hyper-local solutions for food redistribution – such as the expanding network of over 700 community fridges across the UK – prevent food from going to waste in a way that makes financial as well as environmental sense.

No one ever has the intention of wasting food. Stop Food Waste Day is a good day to pause and reflect on what more we can do, not simply at home but also in our community and at work. For more ideas about what we can do together, visit reduce food waste.