20 million tonnes o...
 

[Closed] 20 million tonnes of food binned annually in UK - really?

 Smee
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8240268.stm

So that is around a third of a tonne each per year. Scary thought.


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 9:25 am
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Sad isn't it. What a wasteful bunch of mutha fvckas we are!


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 9:27 am
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I don't know if it's that particular one, but there was one big food waste figure bandied around recently that included food waste as wasted food, so things like bones, tea bags, bannana skins etc. were counted.
Don't take that to mean that I don't think we waste a huge amount of food though 🙂


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 9:40 am
 Drac
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Get a Labrador they'll be not a crumb left to waste.


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 10:22 am
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But you'll end up with a Labrador weighing a third of a ton.


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 10:27 am
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from the look of the lardy pale mother f****rs round here they aint throwing nothing away!!!


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 10:30 am
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I looked up the report. Some stats:

UK households waste 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, around one third of the 21.7 million tonnes we
purchase.

Truly unavoidable food waste, like vegetable peelings, meat carcasses and teabags,
accounts for 1.3 million tonnes a year or 19% of the total

According to the report we each throw away, on average, 70kg a year or 191g per day.

Full report here:


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 10:39 am
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Guilty as charged, but mainly due to travelling with work - I empty the fridge into the bin before each trip, and as most trips are short notice, there's always something getting binned.


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 10:56 am
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I think a major issue is the quantities people buy, which in part is due to the limited range of quantities products are sold in: 70p for a whole cauliflower, or £1 for a quarter of one chopped up, washed and put into a bag.


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 11:21 am
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We lost the ability, or the enthusiasm to be efficient with domestic food management decades ago. Shortly after the last war, nothing was wasted.

Food has become much cheaper relatively speaking. As convenience food and prepackaging proliferated, it got difficult buying exactly what you need. Mums ended up having to work as well as the husbands due to the women's lib lot demanding equal rights and then the big supermarkets that had appeared found their customers doing the weekly shop.

It has become a complicated task managing the weekly houshold food supply. We now forget what we bought, or bought the 2 for one's etc. We also demand variety and choice and this fussiness has a lot to do with the amount of food tha gets binned, but who wants the same thing day after day? The other thing is the car has enabled people to spread themselves far and wide away from shops.

A war, or extreme economic hardship would fix the problem. 😈

If you have time and are in walking distance from the shops, buy your food on a day to day basis. Buy what you need for the day, not what you might fancy in 4 days. You will be in with a much greater chance of wasting less, eating less and spending less. You will also have a handle on what you eat.


 
Posted : 06/09/2009 4:14 pm