This is an archive of East Anglia Food Link's old website and no longer reflects our aims and objectives. We will shortly be launching a new website to present our current work and plans for the future.
Reducing Food Waste
Research over a number of years has suggested that around 30% of the food produced in the UK is wasted. A recent study by Lord Haskins for the government put the figure at nearer 50%. Simply by preventing this waste of good food we can reduce the amount we need to produce. This in turn reduces the environmental impact of food production, for example by making it more possible to use less intensive production methods.
Waste occurs at every stage of the food supply chain. Farmers may grow more vegetables than they have a market for, and have to plough in the remainder. Manufacturers of ready meals complain that they get insufficient notice from the supermarkets of tomorrow's requirements, so have to hold stock of all possible ingredients, and throw away what is not required. Retailers waste relatively little but some "freegans" nevertheless manage to live on what they find in the bins behind supermarket stores.
By far the most significant amount of waste occurs in the home. There appear to be a number of reasons for this:
- "BOGOF" (buy one, get one free) offers from supermarkets often encourage consumers to buy foods such as fresh fruit that they did not actually need. When the food starts to go off they throw it away. A recent survey by WRAP discovered that food waste in domestic bins included large amounts of whole, uneaten fresh fruit - sometimes still in the bags in which it was bought.
- Many consumers have a poor understanding of food safety and tend to "err on the safe side" when it comes to use-by and sell-by dates. Anecdotally one hears of people throwing away perfectly good fresh fruit because it has passed its sell-by date. We need to learn to trust our eyes and noses a little more and labels a little less.
- Many consumers have poor cooking skills, and if they do cook are driven by recipes more than knowledge. This leaves no room for re-using the leftovers from one meal as an ingredient in the next day's meal.
- The extreme case is where people rely on ready meals. Since this involves no cooking at all, there is very little opportunity to use up leftovers. The convenience culture of ready meals also perhaps encourages a sense that the cleanest, easiest thing to do with leftovers is to put them straight in the bin.
- The "weekly shop" culture also appears to be a driver behind food waste. When shopping daily we buy only those things that have run out. But when shopping weekly we buy enough food for the whole week. When people get home with their weekly shop and find food still in the fridge, many report that they simply empty the fridge into the bin to make room for the new food.
Much of this behaviour is the result of our very cheap food culture. If food is cheap, why not throw it away and buy more? As prices rise, consumers will naturally become a little more frugal. Neverthless, this process can be supported by helping people to acquire skills in cooking (as opposed to following recipes), a basic understanding of food safety, and talking through approaches to shopping, menu planning etc that make the best use of what is already in the cupboard or fridge.
School meals also appear to create significant amounts of waste. Whereas a good restaurant chef will generally use the leftovers from one day's service in the following day's meals, school kitchens have no such culture. Tied to rigid menus and recipes (not least by the national nutritional standards), each day's service tends to be seen as separate from the day before and the day after. Food left over at the end of service is generally consigned to the bin.