in amongst my usual weekly offers from ocado, the grocery delivery company for waitrose supermarkets, came an email telling me all about food waste awareness week, 23-29 june 2008. intrigued, i googled to find out more and what i could do to participate - apart from the obvious. i was so disappointed to find very little info on the web, and what there is is hard to find. but at least it answered my question: i know what i can do to help, i can start by collating some resources here.
the low down
one third of the food we buy ends up in the bin. shocking. the reasons given vary from an eagerness to cook complex dishes, with leftover items not being used in a later dish. lack of knowledge of how to store food to keep it fresh is the next biggest reason. simple over-buying and not doing a stockcheck before heading out to the supermarket is another biggie. but the difficulty of buying smaller amounts for today's less numerous family units doesn't feature on the supermarkets' issue list. i wonder why? wrap, the consumer-focussed organisation which attempts to raise awareness around excess packaging and lobby for a reduction of unnecessary wrapping, improved materials and a greater use of recyclable plastics, does bring this up though. lovefoodhatewaste.org is lobbying for more portion sizes to be available in supermarkets and for offers to shift away from 'buy one get one free' to the more sustainable half price model, especially on short shelflife goods.
act
so what should we be doing to cut down our waste? plan your menus ahead to use the other half a packet of an ingredient featured earlier in the week. check what's in your cupboard and make a list before you do your shopping. learn more about sell by and use by dates and how to tell if a product is still good after its use by date. learn about storage and optimise the storage options in your kitchen. and so it goes on. and if you still have too much food then compost it. if you don't have a garden to make your own compost, most councils now have countertop kitchen waste containers that you can put out with the rest of the recycling.
read more
those one-in-three waste figures: investegate.co.uk
packaging optimisation lobby: wrap.org.uk
food waste information site: lovefoodhatewaste.com
