Ambition 2025

On 24 November, WRAP, in partnership with WWF, The Rivers Trust and many other supporting organisations, launched the Roadmap towards Water Security for the Food & Drink Supply to protect vital water resources for the benefit of nature, local communities and the food and drink sector.

The Water Roadmap will be delivered by a coalition of water stewardship expert bodies, on-the-ground delivery agencies and UK food and drink organisations. The Water Roadmap builds on the success of the Courtauld Commitment Water Ambition to deliver even more ambitious changes across the food system in support of the new Courtauld Commitment 2030  target and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The new Water Roadmap directly addresses the climate risk and food security issues surrounding water stewardship whilst highlighting the need for urgent adaptation and action.

It includes:

• The actions organisations need to take individually and collectively, to help deliver this vision - progressing through the five stages of the WWF water stewardship ladder.
• The milestones that we need UK food and drink businesses to reach along this shared journey
• The delivery and governance framework - including the steps to develop and deliver water stewardship projects.
• The reporting framework– ensuring accountability, providing assurance that the right level of progress is being made and that intended outcomes are being achieved.

A total of 65 supporters, including 50 leading food & drink organisations such as Asda, Co-op, Coca Cola GB, M&S, Nestle UK & Ireland, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, are already supporting the Water Roadmap, and WRAP is calling for more to join this growing movement of companies, who are committed to taking action on water.  

Does your company have a leading environmental initiative?

The FDF Environmental Leadership awards category is for companies that can meet either of the criteria below:

• Embedding sustainability throughout a product from development right through to customer use and disposal
• Ground-breaking initiatives to reduce your company's impact on the planet

Enter before the closing date of 28 February 2022, for your chance to win. It’s completely free to enter!

View the full criteria

Find out more about the FDF Awards

Our Head of Climate Change & Energy Policy, Emma Piercy, is undertaking a PGDip in Sustainable Business at Cambridge – and is now working on an ‘Analysis Paper’ looking at a sustainability challenge in the food and drink sector – specifically looking at the role FDF can play in helping to drive change, and then applying those conclusions to the Net Zero policy area.  This will be followed by a second assignment around creating an action plan on account of recommendations from the analysis paper.

As part of the research she is reaching out to different stakeholder groups – and there is a specific questionnaire for food and drink manufacturers, and it is open to both members and non-members of FDF: there are 9 multiple choice questions with the option to add additional comments – and 3 free text questions.  All information gathered is confidential and non-attributable unless explicit permission is otherwise given.  The final paper will be viewed only by Cambridge University and key FDF staff.

If you would like to participate in this survey – you can do so via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/DR8ZR3R

Responses to the survey are requested by Friday 20th August, but will be open a little longer.  Thank you for your support and I look forward to hearing your views!

Today WRAP have announced that they have extended their Courtauld commitment to 2030, with renewed targets on food waste, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water.

1. On food waste, to deliver against UN SDG 12.3: a 50% per capita reduction in food waste by 2030 vs the UK 2007 baseline (covering manufacture, retail, hospitality and food service, and household)
2. On GHG emissions, to deliver a 50% absolute reduction in GHG emissions associated with food and drink consumed in the UK by 2030 (against a 2015 baseline)
3. On water, for businesses to increase water use efficiency in their own operations and contribute to achieving sustainable water management to improve the quality and availability of water at catchment scale with an overall target that by 2030 50% of fresh food is sources from areas with sustainable water management

You can find a summary of progress to date in the Courtauld Commitment Annual Report.

At the same time, and to enable smaller businesses to engage with Courtauld Commitment 2030, WRAP has introduced an Associate Membership model.

In this episode of the FDF podcast, the FDF’s Chief Scientific Officer, Helen Munday is joined by Skye Oudemans and Emma Mansbridge to explore the FDF’s recent Ambition 2025 progress and mid-term review reports. Both reports outlines the impressive progress made by food and drink manufacturers against environmental targets originally set out in 2016 as well as renewed ambitions the industry is aiming for by 2025.

Listen now