Food waste?

[Chris F]

I see a report in the news said that supermarkets throw away 190 million meals each year - or enough to feed 175k people for a year. 0.26% of our population. This is also enough to feed every child on a free school meal.

Given food security is a growing issue in our country the concept of food waste needs to be tackled, just as waste on farm needs to be tackled. The figures are massively worse once you get in people's homes.

I'd be really interested in the % of UK grown food wasted vs imported food. We aren't very self sufficient in fruit for instance (barring apples and pears) and how much of our food "waste" is driven by trying to have products that aren't in season on the shelves.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I bet even more fruit etc is wasted in the home afterwards

 

[RAF]

Biffia run a massive digester on just food waste from supermarket etc . It’s big business and pumps a lot off money into the economy . If we got rid food waste we wouldn’t need produce as much . It’s a viscous circle . We need jobs. Oh and we will never be short food.

 

[Steevo]

Biffia run a massive digester on just food waste from supermarket etc . It’s big business and pumps a lot off money into the economy . If we got rid food waste we wouldn’t need produce as much . It’s a viscous circle . We need jobs. Oh and we will never be short food.

But surely if those people weren’t working on that they could be working on something productive instead? Waste for the sake of keeping people in jobs seems rather a poor use of resources.

It would be like @Muddyroads taking one of @Robert K tractors out in the field each day so he always had some mud to sweep up and paintwork to polish. It stops him being able to do the tidy bits of fabrication in the workshop.

 

[RAF]

Waste is a massive industry . More productive like building hs2 ? All I am saying is we need jobs . They all moan about these digesters, but if they weren’t swallowing all this maize up where would the price off wheat be .

 

[Steevo]

Waste is a massive industry . More productive like building hs2 ?

Maybe so, but it doesn’t justify waste for the sake of it. Far better to use resources more efficiently first time around, and then those resources can be used properly. Better for a dairy farmer to use the right amount of silage and straw rather than double quantities just to keep the muck spreader man busy.

HS2 is total waste too.....they just dress it up as construction! @Cab-over Pete showed us that. (Looking forward to the next update Pete!)

 

[RAF]

Fully agree . But they got build it . It’s right next to me and the money it’s pumping into the economy is good .

 

[Boysground]

I have 2 digesters within a few miles of me, both run solely on food waste. One I have had digestate from, I dread to think how many tons of waste they go through

Bg

 

[teslacoils]

Upwards of 70 percent of my fertiliser is now recycled food waste.

 

[Hindsight]

Well in the past couple of days alone at two village Co-ops. This morning as I collected my newspaper I picked up three bags of leafy salad and three punnets mushrooms all for a little over £1. At weekend stocked up on various loaves at 10 pence each. Always amazed other folk in the store do not take the last dated offers. Hey ho. So this evening it was big bowl of salad with Pork Pie for supper.

 

[Muddyroads]

We host our local food bank, who have done a great deal for those in the area who are in genuine need. It always amazes me how much the local supermarkets provide. The organiser said to me only this evening that she thinks the emphasis is starting to move more towards reducing food waste rather than feeding the desperate.

 

[kiwi pom]

In order to reduce food waste, you'd need to limit production, then if there's an event that restricts food movement or a too dry/too wet spell of weather, food could become scarce. It's why, only eat local isn't the answer either, what happens if there's no local food for a spell?
We should all try to reduce waste whenever possible but some waste is always going to happen if we want to be able to buy food whenever we like.

 

[glasshouse]

Its the supermarkets who cause food waste by overstocking and ridiculous sell by dates
Small shops never did that

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

It may depend on where in the country you are, but our local supermarket (privately owned) would have very little food waste as anything near the sell/use by date is put on a stack of shelves as a bargain basement place. There is seldom anything left at the end of the day.

 

[delilah]

Its the supermarkets who cause food waste by overstocking and ridiculous sell by dates
Small shops never did that

A work colleague tells the story of how, as a skint single mum, she would walk her daughter to the greengrocers at closing time and let the daughter ask for veg for the rabbit. The shopkeeper - who knew full well the game that was at play - would hand over a bag of unsold veg.
Today's skint young mum can't walk to the greengrocer it is long gone, so she would somehow have to get to the out of town supermarket. Ask the checkout person for some veg for the rabbit and they will hit the panic button for security to remove the weirdo.
Our food system is broken. Market share is the root of all evil.

 

[Danllan]

I think the most obvious reasons for more domestic food waste nowadays is storage and price. Because food is so cheap (in historical terms) people buy more than they need, and because homes now have the ability to 'keep' food, they do - often overestimating the shelf-life.

 

[Chris F]

Upwards of 70 percent of my fertiliser is now recycled food waste.

So its not waste per-se then. Which is good, it didn't know it made its way back to on to farm.

 

[Brisel]

When I grew brassica vegetables, waste ranged from 15% to 100% if there was no market for it. Typically 40-50% in the field - that never made it into the statistics either!

Food is too cheap so no one cares about it. Still, a high level of waste means more demand for the produce in the first place.

 

[Dry Rot]

I was in Tescoes one day and noticed that they were unloading the shelves of bread onto one of those pallet carriers. Curious, I asked what they were doing? Oh, they said, this has all to be thrown out. Someone has put the wrong sell by date on them. A whole stack of new bread!

I am a bachelor so do my own shopping for a single household. Everything comes bagged and if you want it, you have to take the whole bag. So inevitably food gets thrown out as I don't want a whole packet of, say, parsnips in a stew. No, that is not one stew for one person but a stew that will feed 7 or 8 as it goes into plastic containers, enough each for one day, and then into the deef freeze! The rest of the parsnips will go into the fridge but they'll probably have gone off by next time. It's not that I am poor, just mean!

 

[organicguy]

Waste is a massive industry . More productive like building hs2 ? All I am saying is we need jobs . They all moan about these digesters, but if they weren’t swallowing all this maize up where would the price off wheat be .

Surely the wheat price is mainly affected by world supply? or have we put tariffs on already?

Well in the past couple of days alone at two village Co-ops. This morning as I collected my newspaper I picked up three bags of leafy salad and three punnets mushrooms all for a little over £1. At weekend stocked up on various loaves at 10 pence each. Always amazed other folk in the store do not take the last dated offers. Hey ho. So this evening it was big bowl of salad with Pork Pie for supper.

I live on co-op out of date cheese. Most of the soft cheese is not fit to eat until it is out of date!