After reading Roshni Kutty’s post on food waste, relevant entries in CHSUK ‘s database were noticed.
In 2008, the British Government launched a campaign to stamp out Britain’s waste food mountains as part of a global effort to curb spiralling food prices.
Supermarkets were urged to drop “three for two” deals on food that encourage shoppers into bulk-buying more than they need, often leading to the surpluses being thrown away. The scandal of the vast mountains of food that are thrown away in Britain while other parts of the world starve was revealed in a Cabinet Office report. It called for a reduction in food waste: up to 40 per cent of groceries can be lost before they are consumed due to poor processing, storage and transport.
The wasted food, 5.3m tonnes worth, is said to add up to about 20 million tonnes (22 million tons) of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s about 2.4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions associated with all consumption, or about the same carbon emissions of two million UK citizens each year.
The report said that UK households could save an average of £420 per year by not throwing away 4.1 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten.
Two years after its launch, the “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign is claiming it has already prevented 137,000 tonnes of waste and made savings of £300 million.