As food prices rise and households feel the squeeze we're still sending billions of pounds worth of food to the tip.
Research published by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has revealed that UK households are binning one third of the food we purchase. This wastage has an estimated value of 9 billion pounds per year.
30-40% of food in the UK is never eaten. These astounding levels of wastage occur at every level from farms and supermarkets through to the consumer. The implications of this excessive waste are not simply financial. The environmental impact of so much rotting food in landfills has also been highlighted by WRAP.
Liz Goodwin, chief executive of WRAP said, "Our research showed that 90% of consumers are completely unaware of the amount of food they throw away. Once attention is drawn to it however, we know that people are surprised and keen to take action."
Defra (The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) is funding WRAP's trial household food waste collection systems. Collecting food waste separately enables proper recycling techniques such as composting to be employed, saving it from being added to the 17 million tonnes of food waste dumped in landfills each year.
Effective food waste recycling is an important initiative. However, preventing such high wastage levels is the main aim of WRAP's 'Love Food Hate Waste' campaign, launched last year. WRAP's research has shown that much of the one third of our shopping that ends up in the bin need not suffer that fate.
The majority of us over-shop by failing to plan menus properly. Poor storage techniques combined with neglecting to consume short-shelf-life products in time adds to the over 5lbs of food we throw away each week.
A few simple changes in our shopping and consuming habits could pay both financial and environmental dividends.
