Presented as a five-point plan, it highlights the current barriers to food waste recycling and practical solutions to overcome them as cost effectively as possible.

Food waste prevention and redistribution will remain a priority, but despite the UK’s best efforts, there is still 10m tonnes of “post-farm gate” food wasted across the UK every year, 40% of which is unavoidable. However, just 1.8m tonnes is recycled. Increasing the volume recycled brings significant economic and environmental benefits.

The action plan supports local authorities already active in food waste recycling – aiming to help them to cost-effectively maximise their food waste collections, and local authorities thinking about adding a collection.

Rory Stewart, Defra Resources Minister, said: “A staggering 10m tonnes of food waste is thrown out every year. Not all of this food waste can be prevented or redistributed and this is where the food waste recycling sector has an important role to play in reducing the amount that goes to landfill.

Marcus Gover, CEO at WRAP, said: “Preventing food waste sits at the heart of what WRAP does, but after we’ve done all we can to prevent and redistribute it, the focus has to shift to recycling. There are significant volumes of food waste still ending up in the residual waste stream.  This is a massive loss of resources.

Ray Georgeson, Chair of the Steering Group, said: “Finding a clear and concise path to improved food waste collections was never going to be easy, but I am delighted by the response of the Steering Group. They have risen to the challenge and we’ve produced a succinct and realistic action plan, which is the industry’s collective response to the barriers holding back growth in food waste recycling. I look forward to seeing us use these actions to deliver tangible change.”

To view the action plan, please visit: www.wrap.org.uk/foodwasterecycling