New Study Will Make People Think Twice About How They Discard Food Waste

Processing food scraps at wastewater treatment plants results in less global warming potential than landfills

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

RACINE, WI, August 2011: Consider the apple core. From an environmental perspective, what’s the most responsible way to dispose of it, or a banana peel, or any food waste?

A new study about the impact of various food waste disposal systems has shown that putting it into a garbage disposer results in lower global warming potential than putting it in the trash and sending it to a landfill. That’s a key finding of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) commissioned by InSinkErator, a division of Emerson, and the world’s leading manufacturer of food waste disposers.

As set forth in the report, if a community of 30,000 households (the size of Newport Beach, Calif.) switched from sending food scraps to the landfill to using a disposer instead, the reduction in global warming potential would be the equivalent of eliminating nearly 2,100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. This is akin to eliminating about 4.6 million miles of car traffic.

According to the EPA, landfills are a major source of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Because food scraps are a significant component of waste that municipalities send to landfills, diverting it for recycling into resources is becoming a major goal of cities worldwide. Enter food waste disposers, which pulverize food scraps and send the resulting slurry to the various wastewater treatment systems evaluated in the LCA.

Many advanced wastewater treatment plants can convert food scraps into renewable energy through a process called anaerobic digestion. At these plants food scraps can also be turned into fertilizer products, also known as biosolids, which can help build healthy soils.

“The LCA confirms a multitude of research and validates that food waste disposers are more than just convenient – I like to think of them as an environmental appliance,” said Tim Ferry, president, InSinkErator. “After people look at the environmental benefits of using disposers instead of landfills, we think they will be compelled to bypass the trash can and put food scraps down the disposer instead.”

LCA Goes Further, Extends Understanding

Unlike studies that review and compare competing products, the LCA assesses the environmental impact of the four primary systems for managing food scraps – wastewater treatment, landfills, incineration and advanced composting. Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM) conducted the initial analysis used by PE INTERNATIONAL, Inc. (formerly PE Americas) to produce the LCA following ISO 14040 standards, including review by an independent panel of experts.

The LCA analyzed several critical environmental impacts: global warming potential (trapping heat that would otherwise pass out of the earth’s atmosphere), eutrophication potential (excessive vegetative growth in bodies of water from high concentrations of nutrients), acidification potential (increase in the acidity of water and soil), smog formation, and the energy demands associated with each system.

The report states that food scraps processed through a wastewater treatment plant with anaerobic digestion and cogeneration (e.g., San Francisco, Milwaukee and many others) can even result in a reduction of global warming potential. It also concludes that processing of food scraps at these advanced wastewater treatment facilities has lower energy demand – less than landfills, incineration and centralized composting.

“In thinking about systems for managing food scraps, wastewater treatment systems are often overlooked despite their surprisingly effective role in turning liquid waste into valuable resources,” said Michael Keleman, senior environmental engineer, InSinkErator. “Composting is good but it isn’t the only option.”

More information about the study and the InSinkErator environmental story is available at www.insinkerator.com/green.

Headquartered in Racine, Wis., InSinkErator, a division of Emerson, is the world’s largest manufacturer of food waste disposers and instant hot water dispensers. For more information about InSinkErator, visit www.insinkerator.com.

Emerson (NYSE: EMR), based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions to customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets through its network power, process management, industrial automation, climate technologies, and tools and storage businesses. Sales in fiscal 2010 were $21 billion. For more information, visit www.emerson.com.

Let me, personally, put it this way, however, and let me say “they would say that, wouldn't they, because they want to sell their waste disposal units” and I don't think that I would be wrong there.

Disposing of food waste down the drain is not one of the best methods, but it may still be better than sending it to landfill. However, where it really should be going is to a food recycling plant which makes the waste into valuable compost.

In the first instance, however, there should be as little food waste as at all possible though it cannot always be avoided and I know that very well myself. But a reduction is possible by buying responsibly and the supermarkets must come in for criticism here also.

Having most stuff – including fruit and vegetables – washed and pre-packaged in amounts that cannot, for instance, be used up by a single person fast enough for the stuff not to go off, is how they make a contribution to this waste.

As consumers, obviously, we have the choice to go to the greengrocers, as far as fruit and vegetables are concerned, and buy only the amount that we can use in a given time.

Tonnes of food are wasted daily in our shops, restaurants and homes, and in homes we do have the control over this and should ensure – and yes, I am guilty too – to only buy as much as we can use in a given period.

Our parents and grandparents did just that but then there were no big supermarkets around in those days and everything was sold through local stores or on the markets and they did go to the shops on a daily basis to buy the ingredients for the day's or next day's breakfast, lunch and supper, etc. This may be something that we will have to consider again too, I guess, and therefore we must find a way to square that away with working and all that.

© 2011

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World wastes at least a billion tons of food a year

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

UN HQ, May 2011: The United Nations said recently that about 1.3 billion tons of food is lost or wasted every year, which amounts to roughly one third of all the food produced for human consumption.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization commissioned a report on food loss and waste, as rising prices and diminished production worldwide have contributed to an increase in food insecurity.

"The issue of food losses is of high importance in the efforts to combat hunger, raise income and improve food security in the world's poorest countries," the report states. "Food losses have an impact on food security for poor people, on food quality and safety, on economic development and on the environment."

According to the report, food losses occur as a result of inefficiencies in food production and processing operations that diminish supplies. Food waste, by contrast, is when retailers and consumers throw edible food in the trash.

Consumers in rich nations waste a combined 222 million tons a year, according to the report. That's almost as much as all the food produced in sub-Saharan Africa. The report puts much

of the blame on retailers in rich nations that throw out food simply because it looks unappealing, and the food industry's 'all-you-can-eat' marketing tactics, which encourage consumers to buy more than they need.

Food price hikes could push millions to poverty "Perhaps one of the most important reasons for food waste at the consumption level in rich countries is that people simply can afford to waste food," the report sates.

Food loss, on the other hand, is mainly a problem in the developing world, where nations lack the infrastructure and technology to efficiently produce food, according to the report.

"Given that many [small] farmers in developing countries live on the margins of food insecurity, a reduction in food losses could have an immediate and significant impact on their livelihood," the report states.

But food is not the only resource that is being wasted. By throwing away so much food, the world is squandering water, land, energy, labor and capital, the report found.

How much have your food bills gone up this year?

To reduce food loss, the report recommend increasing investment in the developing world to make food production more efficient.

In rich countries, the report recommends educating consumers about the extent and consequences of food waste. It also suggests that retailers should relax quality standards and sell produce that is grown closer to where it is sold.

The report says retailers should find ways to make better use of food that would otherwise be thrown out, such as donating it to charity.

Consumers should plan their food purchases more carefully, making sure to consume perishables before the expiration date, according to the report.

What also does not make any sense at all – and yes, I am back at one of my pet hates – is that int eh UK, for instance, we import “organic” green beans from Kenya. Those green beans are a vegetable crop that people there do not eat themselves and produce only for us on land that they could much better use growing food for Kenyans.

I have no problems with bringing in exotic foods and if there be a surplus of Kenyan specialities that we could import and thus give some income to the [poor] farmers in that East African country then that is fine. But what the UK and others do to have Kenyan farmers grow food stuff for us while taking away land and water resources from their own foods is unsustainable and cannot and must not be condoned.

On the other hand people in the developed world, such as the UK and the USA, for example, seem to have lost (one) the ability to cook from scratch and (two) understand the term “best before date” as “throw by date” or “throw just before day” and do not understand that much of that can still be used on the day or a day or so thereafter, maybe longer even depending on the product or produce. Thus, much food is, unnecessarily, thrown away.

In addition to that there are the leftovers which people today often have no idea what to do with. They may go and buy ready-made heat only “Bubble & Squeak” but that they could actually make that from leftover veggies they have no idea. Or, at least, so it would appear.

OK, we all do have stuff that goes off at times, and it happens to me as well, you bet. But knowing what to make from things that may be reaching the going off stage was something our grandparents knew and we must relearn those skills.

An apple that has a little spot of rot does not have to be thrown and neither a pear or a pepper. If a pepper is getting a little soft and maybe no longer good for a salad then use it in cooking. Then again, one would have to know how to cook and what to cook with a pepper now, would one not.

One of the greatest wasters of food, however, are stores and often all it needs is for them to find one veg with a spot on it of rot in order to throw out the entire box. And they not just throw it out; they also ensure that no one can salvage the thrown out box. In order to make sure no one will and can make use of the wasted veggies and such they will douse the boxes liberally in chlorine bleach. Not very environmentally friendly either.

When I was a child greengrocers would ply us with bags of stuff that was still good but needed a little sorting and cutting out a little spot here and there, whether apples, pears, peaches, tomatoes (my Gran made tomato sauce from such tomatoes for canning), and other stuff, for nothing, and the same was true with bread from the baker's at the end of the day. Today this, apparently, is illegal under British and EU laws. I think the law is an ass and it needs changing back not common sense.

© 2011

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Cumbernauld plant leads the way on green power

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A state-of-the-art plant at Cumbernauld which transforms food waste into renewable electricity and heat was officially declared operational on September 28, 2010 by Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead.

The Deerdykes facility, created by Scottish Water Horizons, the public utility’s commercial and renewable energy business, is the largest organic recycling facility in Scotland and the first site in the UK to combine anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting.

Food waste is digested in the plant and can be converted into 8,000 megawatt hours of ‘green’ energy each year - enough electricity to power up to 2,000 homes.

Mr Lochhead said: “In Scotland, we produce around two million tonnes of food waste each year. Preventing household food waste alone going to landfill is the equivalent of taking a staggering one in four cars off Scottish roads.

“As part of our Zero Waste Plan, we aim to recycle 70 per cent of all waste by 2025, with just five per cent landfilled. As well as encouraging the reduction and recycling of waste, a zero waste society is about transforming it into a valuable resource. The new Deerdykes anaerobic digestion plant can process 30,000 tonnes of food waste each year, producing enough electricity to power up to 2,000 homes.

“This is a greatly impressive facility and I congratulate Scottish Water Horizons for being at the forefront of organic recycling and renewable energy. I am confident that facilities such as Deerdykes – the largest in operation in Scotland – will make a significant contribution to a zero waste Scotland.”

Mr Chris Banks, Scottish Water’s Commercial Director and Chairman of Horizons, said: “This new plant shows we’re leading the way not just on renewable energy but in helping Scotland towards its ambition of zero waste. As environmental and recycling targets become even tighter we expect others will follow the lead of Scottish Water Horizons.”

30,000 tons of food waste a year

The state-of-the art Anaerobic Digestion facility at Deerdykes, the site of a former waste-water treatment works, can handle 30,000 tonnes of food waste each year. The anaerobic digestion process breaks down the waste to produce biogas which can then be used to provide electricity to power the works itself with surplus offered to the National Grid or exported directly to local businesses.

The plant also produces heat which could be used in district heating schemes for local homes and businesses in the Cumbernauld area.

The process also creates nutrient rich digestate which can be used as a fertilizer to improve the Scotland's soil, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers whose manufacture has a significant environmental impact.

Helping Scotland towards zero waste

The Deerdykes Composting & Organics Recycling Facility at Cumbernauld was initially used to turn garden waste into compost, primarily converting local authority collections into environmentally friendly 'pod' compost.

The facility benefited from a £1.7million grant from Zero Waste Scotland. Iain Gulland, Director of Zero Waste Scotland, said:

"Anaerobic digestion has a huge role to play in creating a zero waste economy in Scotland, generating jobs and revenue from materials which we have always thought of as waste. Scottish Water Horizons should be congratulated for leading the way with this development.

"Scotland's Zero Waste Plan is clear that organic waste, from food and other sources, should be recycled back into useful products which can, for example, help Scottish farmers grow food crops in a proper 'closed loop' approach. With anaerobic digestion there is an extra benefit of producing gas which can be used for sustainable heat or power. By supporting projects like this, Zero Waste Scotland aims to drive a huge increase in anaerobic digestion and composting."

Scottish Water Horizons is also assessing the production of biomethane from biogas at Deerdykes. The intention is that this sustainable vehicle fuel would be used by Scottish Water's fleet.

Reading the figure of 30,000 tons of waste food that the plant can handle a year one can but wonder how many tons in fact are wasted and dumped annually, primarily in landfill sites. The mind just boggles here.

And, we all know, I am sure, that much of that food would not need to be wasted. Some of it is wastage in transit, we know that, but others is wastage in the form of fruit and veg with a little blemish here or there that greengrocers and supermarkets remove from their deliveries as they believe, and rightly so, often, that customers will not buy those.

Years ago market traders and greengrocers would give away such fruit and vegetables to those that were poorer than the rest and people gladly accepted them. Today they are no longer permitted to do so, whether on markets or in shops. That is why we have so much food waste.

I addition to that there is the fact that so many people today can no longer cook from scratch and also have no idea of how to use leftovers. Thus stuff ends up in the bin. A sad state of affairs.

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At least half of all food produced worldwide is wasted

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Huge amounts of food are wasted after production. It is being discarded in processing, destroyed and hence discarded during transport, at supermarkets and in restaurant and domestic kitchens. This wasted food is, obviously, also wasted water as finds a policy brief released on August 22, 2008 at World Water Week in Stockholm.

The brief written and compiled by the Stockholm International Water Institute, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Water Management Institute shows that the current food crisis is less a crisis of production than a crisis of waste. Tossing food away is like leaving the tap running, the authors say.

"More than enough food is produced to feed a healthy global population. Distribution and access to food is a problem - many are hungry, while at the same time many overeat," the brief states. But, it says, "we are providing food to take care of not only our necessary consumption but also our wasteful habits."

What we must not forget also is that there is, I am sure, still the old food mountain and the stupidity, though no longer as publicly reported as it once was, of actually forcing farmers to dump food stuffs during either a glut or also because it is not the right shape and size or has blemishes.

"As much as half of the water used to grow food globally may be lost or wasted," says Dr. Charlotte de Fraiture, a researcher at IWMI. "Curbing these losses and improving water productivity provides win-win opportunities for farmers, business, ecosystems, and the global hungry."

"An effective water-saving strategy requires that minimizing food wastage is firmly placed on the political agenda," she said.

In the United States, for instance, as much as 30 percent of food, worth some US$48.3 billion, is thrown away. "That's like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion liters of water into the garbage can - enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people," says the report.

The policy brief, "Saving Water: From Field to Fork - Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain," calls on governments to reduce by half, by 2025, the amount of food that is wasted after it is grown and outlines attainable steps for this be achieved.

"Unless we change our practices, water will be a key constraint to food production in the future," said Dr. Pasquale Steduto of FAO.

Water losses accumulate as food is wasted before and after it reaches the consumer.

In poorer countries, so the research found, a majority of uneaten food is lost before it even has a chance to be consumed. Depending on the crop, an estimated 15 to 35 percent of food may be lost in the field, while another 10 to15 percent is discarded during processing, transport and storage.

In richer countries, while production may be more efficient waste is by far greater, so states the report. "People toss the food they buy and all the resources used to grow, ship and produce the food along with it."

As this wasted food rots in landfills it generates methane, a gas that causes climate change and is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

With proper municipal composting facilities, however, this food waste would not even need to go into landfill and if we would permit the use of swill again, properly controlled and monitored, for the feeding of pigs then most of that food waste would be turned into calories and protein.

World Water Week was hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute, a policy institute that contributes to international efforts to combat the world's escalating water crisis.

We must consider the one fact too in this wasted food, as it has been stated, and that is the wasted water, in the form of irrigation (and others), and this when water resources are getting – or could be getting – scarcer due to changes in climate and in rainfall patters.

As someone once said: the next war(s) will not be fought over territory but over access to water resources; a case that always was thus in countries such as Arabia, and such.

Water wars and skirmishes have been about in those places, as well as in other countries, throughout the ages. In future, however, it may actually not be a case of just a clan against another or a rancher against another one; it could indeed be one country against another over the perceived interference with water supply and such.

Whether or not any difference can be made by us in the realm of water resource management by not wasting food, with the exception of the fact that the less food is wastes the less there has to be grown and hence less water being used for watering the plants, does not matter too much either; not wasting food on its own should be enough incentive.

Further savings in the water department could be made if the developed world at least – for I know that the quality of the municipal water and other supplies in some countries out of that realm are dubious – would stop the wasteful practice of drinking bottled water. While a number of that stuff is tap water, which may or not have been filtered and such, there are still many brands that use well and spring water, and such extraction has a bad effect on the water table and the general natural water supply.

So, time we stopped wasting food and water...

© M Smith (Veshengro), August 2008
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Food Waste

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

While I, personally, as many of my readers will have come to know, hate waste of any kind and would love to see everything that is considered waste re-purposed and reworked into something (else) useful, I abhor the waste of food and food waste above all.

I know that while some some waste, and this is also and especially true as regards to food, is unavoidable, for one reason or the other, the wholesale waste of food in our nations' kitchens is horrendous.

Having had a childhood where food was not always plentiful and in constant supply, to say the least, wasting food, especially unnecessarily, to me is just an anathema.

My Elders had clandestine “allotments” where we grew green vegetables and potatoes and such – much left to Nature to look after for most of the time – and we also made use of especially of Nature's bounty in general, including for meat and fish and as kids we knew how difficult it was to have enough.

Therefore, when I see how people in most of the “rich” countries, such as the UK, the USA, and such, just waste food makes me was to hit those people with abandon with something heavy.

In my primary line of work I some across needlessly wasted and discarded food of all kinds on a very regular basis. The value of unopened food thrown away from one largish picnic alone amounted to about US$100 (£50) and I am sure that daily we look at that amount ending up wasted in just one of Park here.

I do not even want to mention the food that is wasted in restaurants, hotels and such, and especially also in events catering, and also in the Houses of Parliament themselves. So, when Gordon Brown tried to tell the British people to stop wasting food I doubt he had a look at the kitchens and restaurants at the Palace of Westminster and other government institutions.

But, in one way he is right. We must stop wasting food.

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

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'Stop wasting food' says Gordon

British PM Gordon Brown urges the nation to stop wasting food.

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's PM, has said at the G8 Summit in Japan where world leaders discuss rising prices.

The Prime Minister said that "unnecessary" purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.

The biggest problem, as I have said before elsewhere, with people today is that most simply cannot cook meals from scratch properly anymore anyway and that they also do not plan meals. This is due to the way we, nowadays, work and live, and also to the fact that children are allowed to be way too finicky as far as food and meals are concerned. If those two things could be changed then we would be a long way towards reducing food waste.

However, I have seen the way food gets wasted, like during picnics in local parks when there are several garbage bags put next to the littler bins, so the foxes can rip them open, with often still unopened pork pies, sausage rolls, etc. What beats me is why people, who obviously had the means to bring in all the food, cannot take it back home with them for use the next day, as and where possible.

A government study says the United Kingdom wastes 4m tonnes of food every year, adding £420 to a family's shopping bills.

Here I would like to ask though as to whether this data is as doctored as that as to knife injuries that are reported as “knife crimes”, if would appear, in the statistics, and includes waste from restaurants, in the way that the “knife injuries” reported by hospitals and doctors to the authorities also includes accidental injuries with knives, though that info is taken in when briefing the media as to “knife statistics” in the effort to ban knives. But I digressed.

But, the question remains as to whether the data of wasted food includes the waste from hotels and restaurants, and such like? A lot of food is wasted in such places. Every conference and every event that is catered for anywhere, whether the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Hotels, or the Racecourses, there is food being thrown after every meal; food that has been prepared for the delegates and attendees but that has not been eaten.

The Cabinet Office report claims that up to 40% of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it is consumed, due to the inadequacies of processing, storage and transport. But what is the excuse in the developed world? We have refrigeration and all that and still we waste tons and tons of food.

The food policy study also says the average UK household throws away £8 of leftovers a week, yet spends 9% of its income on food.

But there is a significant gap between the poorest tenth of the population, who spend 15% and the wealthiest, who pay out 7%.

Those on lower incomes also spend proportionally more on basics such as milk, eggs and bread - foods that have seen the biggest price rises in recent months.

But it is also exactly that poorest tenth of the population, those that are on low incomes or on benefits, that are those that are, today, incapable, of cooking meals from scratch, hence the waste, as they are also, therefore, incapable of reusing any leftovers.

According to the 10-month study, British families are throwing away a total of 4.1m tonnes of perfectly good food every year, costing each about £420 annually.

The UK's Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said that what the government is trying to get across to people is that there is this complex relationship between what we buy, the amount that we buy, the amount that we waste, the impact on climate change and the impact on our health."

But, as Peter Ainsworth, the Shadow Environment Secretary, said it is government departments that should set a better example.

"The amount of untouched food that ends up in our bins is staggering but also financially and environmentally wasteful," he said.

Not only should government departments set a better example, nay they indeed must, if they want to tell households what to do.

While the government is telling households to reduce food waste it has no idea, it would appear, as to how much food it is throwing away itself. This is yet again, as so often with this British government, the Nanny government of “New Labor”, a clear case of the government saying “don't do as we do... DO as we tell you to”. Well, surprise – NOT!

Sustain, an alliance of organisations working for better food and farming, urged supermarkets to stop promoting unnecessary purchases, which they say results in a lot of food "going to waste".

Steve Webb, the Lib Dem environment spokesman, said: "The problem of food waste has been made worse by the government's failure to get tough with supermarkets. Its cosy relationship with the big chains has stalled effective action.

"Supermarkets make it harder for householders to avoid food waste, while throwing away large quantities of edible food through poor stock management.

"They refuse to stock small portions, which are essential for the growing number of one-person households, and offer too many buy-one-get-one-free deals on perishable goods."

But is this not a call for government to be nanny in another field? To me it is. It is the consumer that must ask for change. It is not going to work from above, neither with supermarkets nor with people. Change as regards to the environment and green living and ethical living can only be brought about from the bottom up; it cannot be imposed from on high.

Britain's most wasted foods are potatoes (why, I would like to know?). A whacking 359,000 tons are wasted annually. This is closely followed by bread slices with 328,000 tons, and then by 190,000 of apples.

This waste, such as that with apples, I am sure is still exasperated by farmers being ordered to destroy apples by the thousands of tons during a glut, in the same way as the law is an ass in regards to stores not being permitted to give away food to those that cannot afford it or those that are happy to take it off their hands, such as fruit and vegetables that are coming to the end of their display time.

During my childhood the costermongers selling fruit and vegetable on the markets, instead of being forced to throw fruit and vegetables that were in need to be used immediately gave those away. Oranges, apples, bananas, spuds, and whatever else was given to us kids to take home for our mothers to make meals from and such and none of us ever got ill from the stuff. In fact, I think, that amount of fruit and veg that came that way for free kept us healthy. Nowadays they are forced to throw it away. They are not allowed to even give it away.

Such food, such fruit and veg that today must be thrown away, by law, also and especially adds to the mountain of waste.

While it is unavoidable, at times, as I mentioned in a previous article, for some foods to go off – we may have forgotten that it is there or such – it should, ideally, not happen, however. But... change cannot be imposed from above. People can be and must be admonished, as they were during the years of austerity in the Second World War, and they will definitely stop wasting food as soon as it bites them in the pocketbook.

I know that during World War II is was even a criminal offense to waste food I do not think that we could or should reintroduce such measures but some good campaigns on radio, TV and the Internet might be a good idea, and posters too on the transit systems and on billboards.

© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008

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Britons wasting £10 Billion worth of food a year, research says

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

We’ve already heard lots about the food crisis that is threatening global development, and we have had plenty of debate about how eating no meat, a little meat, fake meat and even the plain old potato might help ease global hunger, stop global warming, and generally make life easier for all of us. But let’s forget about what we do eat for a moment – a new report coming out of the UK shows the staggering costs of what we don’t eat:

The British people are throwing away £10 billion worth of food that could be eaten each year, £2bn more than estimates have previously suggested, a government-funded programme to cut waste has revealed.

And that folks, is ten billion Pounds Sterling as in British billion and not US billion. In other words the calculation that someone made of this being equal to US$20 billion is off as the US has a different billion to the UK, so at least I have always understood that. Apparently the US billion is a thousand million and the other billion a million million.

The average household, ranging from a single older person to a group of students, is throwing out £420 of such food each year and the sum rises to £610 for the average family with children.

About £6bn of the wasted annual food budget is food that is bought but never touched - including 13m unopened yoghurt pots, 5,500 chickens and 440,000 ready meals dumped in home rubbish bins each day. The rest is food prepared or cooked for meals but never eaten because people have misjudged how much was needed and don't eat the leftovers.

Well, I guess I must be one of the odd ones out, as very little gets thrown out; at least not into the trash can. The important thing is to make sure that one;'s food is in date and rotate supplies, be those cans or other stuff.

Leftovers, if perfectly good, goes in the frigde and is used next day. Cans the contents of which has only been used half, say, also can be saved in that one uses food saver containers and, again, keeps the stuff in the fridge till the next day.

The problem is though that most people cannot cook from scratch anymore, at least not in this country, that is to say in Britain, and either entirely rely on ready to do meals or such. And even if they cook from scratch they just cannot think of what to do with leftovers. Children turn their noses up at something cooked from leftovers but there is nothing wrong with it and if the person doing the cooking has imagination and flair in cooking and often all that is needed is just a little then nice meals can be made from such leftovers.

The complete £10bn consists of food that could have been eaten, not including peeling and bones, the researchers say. Tackling the waste could mean a huge reduction in CO2 emissions, equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road.
The figures have been compiled by WRAP, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, which previously made the £8bn estimate and has warned we are throwing away a third of the food we buy, enough to fill Wembley stadium with food waste eight times over in a year.

Food waste has a significant environmental impact, and that not only from having to go somewhere. The research confirms that it is an issue for us all, whether as consumers, retailers, local or central government. This will, I believe, spark, and so it should, a major debate about the way food is packaged, sold, stored at home, cooked and then collected when it is thrown out.

While I have just mentioned the way food is packaged the food packaging here as waste, is and was not even the issue, but could also be mentioned when it comes to waste per se. That, however, could be another story all together.

What is most shocking here the most is the cost of our food waste at a time of rising food bills, and generally a tighter pull on our purse strings. It highlights that this is an economic and social issue as well as how much we understand the value of our food.

Consumers' wastefulness is costing them three times over. Not only do they pay hard-earned money for food they do not eat, there is also the cost of dealing with the waste this creates, and they pay for that through their council taxes and such. Then there are climate change costs to all of us of growing, processing, packaging, transporting, and refrigerating food that only ends up in the bin.

In addition to that there is the ethical bit, so to speak. We waste tons and tons of food daily while there are 1,000s upon 1,000s in this country and elsewhere in the developed world – I do not even want to mention the poor in the developing world, the are I still call Third World – who go hungry. I must say that I, like probably many of my generation, was raised with the adage of not wasting food, whether on the plate or elsewhere. Being of Romani-Gypsy stock may have something to do with that too as food was not always plenty.

When it comes to food waste though and it having to be dumped it is time to start thinking seriously about municipal composting programs like those in Mexico, Seattle and San Francisco, and on an individual level we can all take responsibility by biting off only what we can chew - check out some of the helpful tips on everything from portion sizing to storage to using left overs at Love Food Hate Waste, the campaign that commissioned the original report.

© M Smith (Veshengro), May 2008

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Britons wasting £10 Billion worth of food a year, research says

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Food Waste

The beginning of November 2007 saw the launch of the “Love Food Hate Waste” campaign by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP). The mission of the “Love Food Hate Waste”campaign is to get us, the people in general, to reduce the amount of food – which is rather horrendous – that we waste at home.

But, I would like to ask, what about the food, perfectly good food, that is being thrown away before it ever leaves the farm, often by other of the powers that be – and I am not talking about meat from animals with Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD), which is safe for human consumption (yes, folks, it is, and much of the beef that comes from Argentina in fact is full of the stuff) – to keep prices artificially inflated, especially in times of glut.

Some years ago apple growers in Kent were forced by the government to dump “overproduction” – maybe someone should have had a word with the trees to stop producing so many apples that year – didn't they known there is a quota? – in holes, huge holes, dug for that very purpose, on their farms. Those farmers were livid as there were not even allowed to give those perfectly good apples away free to people in need.

What was the reason for such an outrage of wanton destruction of perfectly good food?

Simply the fact that there was a glut of English apples – and what is the problems with that, I am sure, some readers may now ask – and the “Intervention Board”, as I believe it was called then, stepped in to keep the prices artificially up in the shops. The people who benefited from this action were not the farmers or the ordinary people, the consumers; the only ones who did were the middlemen, not even the retail traders. In addition to price fixing the “Board” intervened as a glut of English apples would have meant a reduction in the share of the market for apples from other European Union countries, such as France.

We also must here consider those fruits and vegetables that do not make it to the shelves of the stores and to our tables because the middlemen decide that the consumer does not like misshapen fruit and vegetables, or those with slight blemishes. The truth is that many consumers indeed do not want apples with slight natural blemished or misshapen carrots or the like. In addition to that there are those that never make it and get destroyed because the EU bureaucrats in Brussels, so we are being told, have deemed them not to be the right size or shape. It appear that only apples, pears, tomatoes, etc. of a certain size and shape are, according to those Eurocrats, proper and therefore only those sizes may be sold to the consumer. Come on, a pound (yes, I talk Imperial) of carrots is a pound of carrots whether they are huge (and then rarely have taste) or small and crooked.
Maybe someone needs to tell those that sit in ivory towers, whether in Brussels, Strasbourg or in Whitehall, that, unlike manufactured goods, fruit and vegetables do not come in uniform shapes and sizes and do not, generally, grow in a mold. Apples, pears, peppers, tomatoes, when left to grow naturally, are all different sizes and shapes, some large, some small, some with little blemishes, some not; that is Nature's way.

With waste like that we have to start as regards to reducing food waste before we have a go at we, the consumer.

While it is indeed true that too many of us waste about half of the food that we buy in the stores every week because we buy too much and it does not get eaten or leftovers are simply thrown into the garbage instead of using them the next day – waste no want not – in order to reduce the food waster per se the start must be made at the beginning of the chain. This may mean that the consumer will have to learn to accept, once again, misshapen fruit and veg, the way they naturally grow, and also the little blemishes that are there naturally and only are not generally found in the boxes at the food stores because they are removed by the packing houses and, more often than not, are being destroyed there.

We are seeing the return of blemished apples and other fruit and veg and those of different sizes and shapes like, for example, in the Basics range of produce at Sainsbury's.

Food for thought, I hope...

© Michael Smith (Veshengro), December 2007

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Food Waste

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