Love Food Hate Waste
7 December 2007This month has seen the publication of some shocking findings from a significant piece of research carried out by the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme WRAP based in Banbury. The research findings offer a sobering new perspective on just exactly how much food is wasted in the UK, a problem that has actually been worsening in recent years.
WRAPs statistics found that 6.7 million tonnes of food was thrown away in the UK last year and just about half of that was edible food, totally unnecessary. That vividly translates into one in every three shopping bags we buy going directly into the bin.
Of course the impact upon the environment is untold, not just from the waste that is dumped on the landfill sights but also the energy that has been squandered to produce food which has gone directly to the bin men.
The rise in food wastage has been blamed on many factors including advertising and supermarkets mega-super deals but while acknowledging the fact that there are many causes we cannot deny that we hold much of the blame on our own shoulders.
Luckily for us WRAP are clearly not just here to depress us with facts and figures. The Love Food, Hate Waste campaign has been set-up by them along with support from many other areas including celebrity chefs in an attempt to bring home the real truth about food waste and to provide loads of practical tips. The campaign has already received a lot of coverage particularly in print media but I have chosen to discuss this topic as well because it is such an easy environmental problem to solve and it is one of the few that we are directly responsible for. Stopping this amount of food wastage would be the equivalent of taking one in five cars off of our roads!
The Love Food, Hate Waste website is one of the best environmental pages I have seen for a long time so I highly recommend anyone with web access to make a visit, the address can be found at the end of this article. Alternatively, you can ring the information line for more details on 0808 100 20 40.