WRAP – 2023

WRAP’s Guardians of Grub campaign focuses on reducing costs and protecting the planet to reduce the climate impact of wasted food for the hospitality sector. 

It takes natural resources, energy and time to produce our food. British pubs produce more than 200,000 tonnes of food waste every year, 75% of which could have been eaten. Besides the financial cost to businesses (avoidable food waste £0.14 per meal), every kilogram of wasted food requires the equivalent of over 3 kilograms of CO2e to produce as well as the associated GHG from disposal.   

Developed for the Hospitality and Food Service sector, the ‘Guardians of Grub’ campaign, from sustainability experts WRAP, is designed to help support pubs and other hospitality food businesses to take action.   

The latest addition to the campaign is an e-learning course ‘Becoming a Champion’ which has been developed by industry professionals to take food waste reduction skills to the next level. From the pilot, those organisations that completed either 4 or 8 week audits of their food waste, combined with other ‘Guardians of Grub’ learnings and insight, saw savings, on average of between 23 and 38% reduction in their food waste levels.  

The sector is encouraged to play its part and join over 350 organisations already committed to milestones laid out in the UK Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, and implement ‘Target, Measure, Act.’

Businesses can access more support to reduce food waste through  WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment 2030 which also addresses Scope 3 Supply Chain GHGs and Water Stewardship.  WRAP has separate Voluntary Agreements on Plastics and Textiles to reduce impact.

The following case studies show specific examples of the Guardians of Grub campaign in action: