Are you a waster?

• Oct. 31 by Rebekah Douglas (0)

WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) announced that an average of £10 billion worth of food is being wasted by us Brits alone every year.

The ‘Love food hate waste’ campaign are attempting to encourage household owners to use the food we have by offering a guide of how we can use leftovers.

A Birmingham Friends of the earth article outlines the statistics showing how severe the problem is. They said:

“Wasted food costs the average household throws out £420 of good food a year. For the average family with children it’s higher at £610.

“Researchers found that more than half of the food thrown out was still edible, is bought and simply left unused or untouched.”

Not only is this a huge waste of money, especially with grocery prices on the increase, but it is also means that we are having a negative impact on our so very precious planet earth!

Food waste is affecting the air we breathe by adding in polluting gases, which is bad for the environments natural atmosphere. Disposing of £1 billion worth of food every year releases methane, which has been described as one of the most potent greenhouse gases.

Birmingham Friends of the earth used WRAP’s calculations to show that stopping the waste of good food could avoid 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents from being emitted each year.

A source for WRAP said:

“Since the launch of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign in 2007, research shows that 1.8 million more UK households are now taking steps to cut back on the amount of food they throw away, resulting in an overall saving of £296 million a year, stopping 137,000 tonnes of food being thrown away. This prevents 600,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases being emitted, which is the same carbon impact as taking 100,000 return flights to Australia out of the skies.” 

It’s good to see people have been making the effort to reduce the problem, which is why we shouldn’t stop there! Get your Tupperware boxes out and keep eating, not wasting.