I have decided to look into the food people waste at home for my blog post this week, it is an important issue to share a few thoughts on and have a look at the actual amount the UK wastes each year. I found a Guardian article (link shared at the bottom of the blog) from last month, which is interesting as it highlights just how much we as a country waste each year, which is 4.2million tonnes of edible food. Just think about that sheer amount for a moment, thats a ridiculously large figure, especially if you think that all goes straight into the bin. According to the statistics published by the UK's Waste Resources Action Programme (Wrap) , they have found that "every year British people buy 7 million tonnes more food and drink than they consume. More than half of this food is edible at the time of its disposal", this is a crazy statistic, 50% of the food British people throw away is still edible. One must surely then think about the idea of use by dates and the waste this causes, perhaps people need to not religiously follow the use by dates to the day, and use common sense and judgement before stating if the food has gone off and must be binned.
Giving a first hand view of this waste is my housemate, who I shall not name and shame online, but he is absolutely horrific at waste. Yesterday I caught him about to chuck out a block of cheese, and I mean a block, when I questioned him his response was "oh the packet said use it within 4 days, its the 5th day so I guess I should chuck it?" Pure obscenity! That is beyond belief, cheese will not go off for weeks, just keep it in the packet and it will be totally fine, yet after the stated 4 days he was ready to throw it out in the midst of all the other waste that perhaps, shouldn't be waste at all.
This leads me onto the thought of the waste mentality shared by many across the country, people seem to worry that as soon as the item is past its use by date it automatically gains the title 'waste' or 'hazardous' in a sense, which really should not be the mentality to have when thinking about the environment and having a sliver of common sense. An interesting fact that the article uncovered was that "the top three foods that Britons are throwing away uneaten include every day essentials: bread, potatoes and milk", potatos can last for weeks and weeks after their use by date and bread can last much longer if left in the fridge. People just have that mentality that after the date passes, it becomes useless to them. Milk is the only one I agree with, any longer than a day or two after the use by date and I wouldn't touch it either.
The impact on the environment from this waste of course is not good, more waste means more and more rubbish is filling landfills across the country also the production process of creating all this food, the plastic packaging and transportation just to be thrown away into a landfill raises obvious issues, it is down to the consumer though to not buy too much such as buy one get one free offers, but also for the supermarket chains to cut down on the plastic packaging the food. I do realise this has been a long debate and a large issue that has been in the press for a multitude of years but still this new research and statistics released are some cause of alarm, the sheer waste that has now been defined in a number is just staggering. We have the power to change this, we just need to change our mentality on the use by date idea, and to use common sense when throwing food away.
Link to article for additional information:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/07/why-waste-food-home
