Birmingham City Council Supports Love Food Hate Waste Campaign

• Mar. 2 by Katie Wood (1)

Birmingham City Council has pledged their support to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign as a new study has revealed that £10 billion pounds worth of food is being thrown away each year.

The study, concluded by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), has announced that we throw away one third of food we buy each year, roughly £420-£610 dependant on the household.

The study highlighted that over half the food thrown out, worth £6 billion, was still edible and was left unused or untouched. For example each day, 1.3 million unopened yoghurt pots, 5,500 whole chickens and 44,000 ready meals are thrown away in the UK.

One of the reasons behind the readiness to throw unused food away is due to the lack of knowledge on the subject, as most people believe that food waste is a benign substance and that it just rots away in the landfill.

In actual fact for food to compost properly it needs light and air and by being in the landfill it will have neither. Therefore it creates methane gas which contributes to Global Warming.

WRAP calculated that stopping the waste of good food could avoid 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents from being emitted each year. This is the same as taking 1 in 5 cars off UK roads.

Click here for more information on how to reduce food waste.