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'Waste Not, Want Not'

08 May 2008 by Paul Northup

Every day we throw away 4.4 million apples, 1.6 million bananas, 1.3 million pots of yoghurt, 660,000 eggs, 550,000 chickens, 300,000 packs of crisps and 440,000 ready meals. Most of it is untouched – left uneated in fridges and cupboards until we chuck it.

And not forgetting 1.2 million sausages, 710,000 packs of chocolate or sweets, 260,000 packs of cheese, 50,000 milkshake bottles and 25,000 cooking sauces.

A new study from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), which involved sifting through the dustbins of 2,138 people who signed up to an audit of food detritus, finds that an average home is wastes £420 a year on food it doesn’t eat – for a family with children, make that £610.

Apart from the huge savings available to everyone at a time when many of us are feeling the pinch, rethinking the way we buy our food – and eat it – could also create huge environmental savings. In The Independent Environment minister Joan Ruddock puts it like this: ‘This is costing consumers three times over. Not only do they pay hard-earned money for food they don’t eat, there is also the cost of dealing with the waste this creates. And there are climate- change costs to all of us of growing, processing, packaging, transporting and refrigerating food that only ends up in the bin. Preventing waste in the first place has to remain a top priority."

WRAP are suggesting five ways to cut food waste:

• Plan meals for the whole week, working out how much food is needed for each main course and pudding.
  
• Shop more carefully. Write a list of the things you need, and then stick to it. Avoid “buy one get one half-price” promotions if you cannot eat the extra food.
  
• Buy a mixture of fresh and frozen. Pull frozen food from the freezer when necessary.
  
• Know your labels. A “best before” is not when food has to be thrown out – it may still be usable. Instead, use your nose to check whether something is off.
  
• Use leftovers. They can create quick, tasty, nutritious and cheap dishes

Read The Food We Waste report from WRAP here

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1. orielwen
   Perth, GB , 08 May 2008

   I find it better not to plan meals, as if you plan them all then you don’t have any occasion to use up leftovers. Many recipe books and diet plans are horrible for this as well: 100ml of passata, but how do you use the rest of the packet? One slice of melon, but when do you eat the rest of it? Freezers, however, I’d agree are great. Buy stuff on special and shove it in there, and then you have it for the day you seem to have run out of everything.

2. jc.
   GB , 12 May 2008

   How about not avoiding the buy one get one free/half price why not be generous and give one to a friend. OK not the point of the article – but it’s a thought!

3. jystewart
   London, GB , 13 May 2008

   We tend to find that if we plan our meals we can often predict what there will be leftovers of, or make more than the recipe calls for in order to use up the entirety of something and then have that meal over two days.

   Some of that planning comes from necessity - when we don’t plan we rarely make good use of our organic box delivery - but it also tends to reduce stress as we know what needs to be done, and when.

4. eatethically
   Ribble Valley, GB , 15 May 2008

   Shop Daily. Avoid prepackaged food. I.e. supermarket food. Go to a local supplier and they will supply you with exactly the quantity you need for the meal you have planned. If you still have food not eaten, put it in the fridge for reheating the next day. If there isn’t that much (i.e. scraps) put it in the dogs bowls to supplement their meals, or even better, give it to the chickens to provide your next meal. Anyone with a garden can have a couple of chickens!

   The worst case scenario is to put the uncontaminated vegetable scraps in the compost heap for your next crop. There’s no food wasted in our house!

5. Cordelia
   GB , 27 May 2008

   Why can’t you just put left overs in the freezer if it isn’t convenient to use for the next meal? Left over veg can be frozen and made into soup as they aren’t so nice the next day. Everything else just goes into little pots. We defrost our freezer every 4 months or so and then the challenge is how to eat up the miscellaneous little pots. Still doesn’t get wasted!

6. flutterby
   Haywards Heath, GB , 27 May 2008

   we try to plan our meals each week. it means we are able to know what we have and make sure we eat it all although we often buy slightly more than we need so that we can make enough to freeze some and then we have pot luck meals (included in our weekly plan to enable a cookfree night) so one of us might have chilli, another bolognese and someone else has macaroni cheese! and anything else is composted (except meat products but these are rarely binned, usually just the toddlers leftover – let’s face it who wants to eat what the toddler didn’t….)

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