At Cop30, food waste must be put back on the climate agenda

As world leaders gather in Brazil to discuss the climate crisis, Britain’s quietest scandal – the mass wasting of food in a country where hunger is rising – needs our attention, writes London’s Community Kitchen founder Taz Khan

At six in the morning in a Harrow warehouse, the lights hum over pallets of oranges, bread and pre-packed salads. Volunteers in hi-vis jackets unload crates stamped with supermarket logos, stacking them in cold rooms and crates. Hours earlier, these same goods were scheduled for destruction – perfectly edible yet deemed surplus.

This is the frontline of Britain’s quietest scandal: the mass wasting of food in a country where hunger is rising. It is also one of the most overlooked drivers of the climate crisis.

Recent figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the waste charity WRAP highlight the scale of Britain’s food waste crisis, with an estimated 10.7 million tonnes discarded each year across farms, factories, shops, restaurants and homes — waste valued at around £17bn, or roughly £1,000 for an average family of four.

Households are responsible for around 60 per cent of the total, while farms contribute nearly a sixth, and almost half of what is thrown away is still perfectly edible, representing millions of lost meals every day. Beyond the financial and social impact, the environmental cost is profound, with wasted food producing around 18 million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually, undermining both the UK’s climate commitments and its food security.

The real cost is to the planet. UK food waste creates 18 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually – the equivalent of 3.5 million cars or one tenth of UK cars on the roads (according to RAC Foundation). At a time when we’re hosting global climate talks and pledging net zero, this hidden crisis undermines our commitments.

‘Food waste must be put at the centre of the climate agenda. At Cop30, governments should legislate for measurement. Waste must be tracked farm-to-fork, publicly reported, and independently audited’ (PA Wire)

If we are serious about food security and climate leadership, tackling food waste must be treated as a national priority alongside immigration, energy and transport.

And yet, when governments file their national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, fewer than 15 per cent even mention food waste. It is a blind spot that borders on negligence.

For 12 years I have run London’s Community Kitchen, intercepting surplus food and redistributing it to schools, shelters and community hubs. In that time, we have saved thousands of tonnes from landfill, serving millions of meals. We believe in “Zero Waste – Zero Hunger”.

What I have seen is not just inefficiency. It is a system that actively incentivises destruction. Farmers are locked into contracts where it is cheaper to plough crops back into the soil than harvest and distribute them. Supermarkets still impose cosmetic standards that see edible produce rejected. Defra, the very department tasked with protecting our food system, commissions endless reviews and pilots but fails to legislate for mandatory measurement or redistribution. Meanwhile, the consultancy industry profits handsomely from producing reports and frameworks about food waste – while redistribution hubs like London’s Community Kitchen survive on volunteers and near-zero core funding.

We have built a machine that rewards waste and punishes redistribution.

This is Britain’s quiet hypocrisy: the Food Standards Agency enforces strict traceability on every sandwich sold, but when that same sandwich becomes surplus, no system ensures it reaches a hungry child instead of a bin.

Food waste must be put at the centre of the climate agenda. At Cop30, governments should legislate for measurement. Waste must be tracked farm-to-fork, publicly reported, and independently audited. There must be no more shadows. Embed waste reduction in less developed countries. Every nation should commit to halving food waste by 2030 as part of its Paris Agreement obligations.

Flip the incentives. Protect donors from liability, tax credits for redistribution, penalties for destruction. France has shown the way. Fund the doers, not the talkers. Redirect money from consultancy contracts into community redistribution hubs, cold chain storage, and AI-enabled logistics. Reframe waste as security. In climate-vulnerable states, wasted food is not inefficiency – it is instability. Food loss fuels conflict as surely as drought. Only in this way can we face Britain’s quietest scandal and finally turn up the noise.

Taz Khan MBE is the founder of London’s Community Kitchen