Food waste scandal

Monday 20th May 2019 13:09 EDT
 

It is really scandalous situation for allowing so much food to go to waste. It could feed thousands of hungry men women and children instead of going down the drain. It not only wastes good and healthy food but also money. The problem is overstocking of food and failure to use the food by their sell by date. Fruits and vegetables have the highest wastage rates of any food - with roots and tubers not far behind.

In the UK alone, 8.4m people in the UK struggle to afford a meal, according to the UN's FAO - despite the UK wasting billions through food waste every year, according to food waste charity WRAP. It estimates that 1.9m tons of food is wasted by the food industry every year in the UK alone and claimed that at least 400,000 tons of this could be redistributed to those in need. The British restaurants dispose of in total of 600,000 tons of food waste per year. We waste about a third of all food, produced for human consumption. Impacts of food waste is that the overall cost to the UK of food waste each year is £17 billion, of which £12.5 billion is the cost to households. 

To look at this another way, the cost of food waste to an average household is estimated to be £470 per year. Food waste also has environmental impacts (primarily in the form of greenhouse gas emissions and water use) and links with social issues such as food poverty. The food charities do this by taking surplus food from the food industry and redistributing it to frontline charities which are best-placed to turn it into meals for vulnerable people. The UK wastes 10.2 million tonnes of food a year, the equivalent of 250 million meals, costing £15 billion or £500 per household, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

To tackle this problem we need to put in place food management and recycling of food. To plan and store to avoid waste, recycle food waste, use it for composting, make fermented foods with left overs and connect with food banks using these new apps, to save food that otherwise goes to waste.

Baldev Sharma

Rayners Lane, Harrow


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