Businesses saved more than £100 million on food waste between 2012 and 2015.

The achievement came as 50 retailers and manufacturers fought to achieve the ‘Courtauld Commitment 3’ (CC3) green targets.

Waste charity WRAP developed and managed the CC3 agreement on behalf of the UK Government and established a group of businesses, sector bodies and food redistribution organisations to share their knowledge and experiences.

The £100 million was saved as signatories successfully fought to reduce business food and packaging waste by 3%.

This meant around 219,000 tonnes of waste was prevented from going to landfill and nearly double this amount of Carbon Dioxide emissions was also avoided.

Aims to stop any increase in the carbon impact of packaging by 2015 were smashed, with a 7% reduction as recycling rates increased and packaging designs became greener.

The third target of reducing household food and drink waste by 5% was however not successful, only seeing a reduction from 7.3 million tonnes to seven million tonnes.

The group suggest this was as a result of population growth, falling food prices and increased personal earnings.

WRAP’s consumer campaign ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’ is now working towards Courtauld 25 goals.