Food waste

Wasting less food has a direct and indirect positive impact on each and every one of us – we would save money for one – each year £700 worth of edible food is thrown away by the average UK household. But it doesn’t stop there – the list of benefits are numerous and profound. Here’s just a few of them for you to mull over:

Less waste will go to landfill, which means the council doesn’t spend as much money on landfill taxes – the savings could then, in theory, be passed on to the taxpayer or channeled in to more important activities that benefit the community.

The decomposition of the food waste that ends up in landfill in the UK produces the equivalent of 17 million tonnes of CO2 annually – more than the total emissions generated by Slovenia in the same period.

There is something that every individual in every country of this world can do with ease – something that requires no additional time or energy to be expended, or money invested – in fact there will be money saved, and it requires no specialist knowledge or training. Something that people of all ages, all social classes, all ethnic backgrounds, all religious and political belief systems can do. In fact there is not a single barrier to each and every individual’s inclusion in the participation of this action – and what is it exactly?! To waste less food.

It was the desire to feed into the momentum towards an understanding of how we can reduce the amount of food we waste that motivated me to explore the solutions to food waste – those which are currently being successfully implemented by various initiatives and organisations within the UK.

I have built a dedicated website for the project – foodiswasted.com which I hope with time will grow to become a resource – a place where people can come not just to glimpse the great work being done, but connect with the organisations and individuals doing this work, as well as find out about food waste – the problems, the consequences and the solutions, from people working on the frontline of the movement for change.

You can also keep tabs on me and the project on Twitter as @FoodIsWasted