by Michael Smith
Householders are eating up a campaign designed to cut the quantity of food going straight in the bin, according to its organizers.
The “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign, run by Government-funded Waste & Resources Action Program (WRAP), aims to provide tips and encouragement to those wanting to cut down on food waste, and therefore their shopping bills.
The campaign was launched in 2007 and claims to have helped close on two million households reduce their food waste, amounting to savings of almost £300 million and stopping 137,000 tonnes of waste going in the bin.
Those statistics may be impressive but they are nothing if compared to the true scale of the problem.
WRAP suggests that 6.7 million tonnes of food is thrown away from UK homes each year - a third of the all the food that we buy - and this costs us, the consumers, the sum of about ten billion Pound Sterling annually.
Liz Goodwin, chief executive of WRAP, said she was encouraged by the impact the Love Food Hate Waste campaign has been making: "At a time when every penny counts, saving nearly £300 million is a great achievement for hard pressed consumers.
"Food which ends up in landfill produces damaging greenhouse gases and is a terrible waste of resources. We're delighted that the Love Food Hate Waste campaign is helping individual households enjoy more of their food, help the environment and save money."
"We recognize,” She continued, “that although the results of the first year are encouraging, there is much more to do, and we are confident we can continue to support the growing number of households cutting back this waste."
The campaign has been promoting practical advice and tips to help people make the most of the food they are buying, and waste less of it. Many of these tips and hints can be found on the organization's website.
What WRAP, the organizers of the “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign which, after all is funded by the government, are really interested is is not our pocketbooks and how much we can save if we do not waste the amount of food as we do but to keep waste out of landfill. That is what it really boils down to. And that is because the governments, local and central, will be held to account by Brussels (an d now someone tell me yet again that we have not given our sovereignty away to the EU) to meet certain targets in reduction of waste going into landfill and could be penalized if those targets are not met.
That is, basically, the long and short of it and not that they want to help us, as the people of the people of this country, save money.
On the other hand it is indeed a great deal of food that is being wasted by people who are often just a little ignorant as to what a “best before” date means, or a “use by” date, and also as to how to store foods.
Bananas, for instance, do not belong into the fridge and neither must other fruit ever be stored in the same bowl, for instance, with bananas, as they give off a gas that makes other fruit ripen rapidly, and hence reducing the shelf life of other produce. Not many people seem to know this though for again and again one sees – even on the TV – bananas in the same fruit bowl with apples, pears, grapes, etc. and while this is just about OK for a display on a table for the day they definitely should not remain in there after a dinner, for instance.
Food storage is the greatest problem to make the campaign work properly, closely followed by people's ignorance as to the meaning of those dates. In addition to that people also will have to relearn and learn the skills of how to make meals from scratch and from leftovers.
The reduction of food waste is not just important as far as landfills are concerned but more so even to continue food security for this country. Our wastage of food can b e damaging in more than one aspect and hence it must be reduced and stopped and it can be done, to a great extent.
© M Smith (Veshengro), January 2009
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Campaign to reduce and stop food waste is working
