10 Things You Should Know About Food Waste: 1) Research has shown that over 60% of consumers are concerned with the ethical dimension of their food consumption. The most obvious example of this is the fair trade movement. Since 2005, a consumer movement has emerged in order to combat food waste. 2) Food waste harms the environment in more ways than one. When you waste food the many resources that went into producing, processing, transporting and storing your food also goes to waste. 3) The average household wastes over £450 worth of food every year, around £60 per month – think globally, and you could feed entire populations that currently suffer from starvation. 4) Natural resource depletion is very much intertwined with food production systems, therefore the environmental cost of throwing food away is enormous BUT avoidable – you as a consumer and production and retail chains can very much impact how food waste numbers evolve in the future. 5) Food waste is a much bigger problem than packaging – in terms of numbers food waste is 10 times more important than packaging when it comes to CO2 emissions. 6) Between a third and half of all current food production ends up as waste. 7) There are a large number of very small but significant things you can do to reduce food waste. Freeze food before the use-by date, plan to buy only what you need and don’t let bruised fruits go to waste… 8) The packaging around food is meant to keep it at its best for the longest – don’t take food out of its packaging until you’re about to eat it. 9) If we are 9 million by 2050, as predictions have shown, food production will need to increase by 70%, reducing food waste would change these numbers radically. 10) Food waste has social consequences that affect most of the population – the rising price of food stuffs and price volatility have made high quality foods less accessible to middle and lower socio-economic groups.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 17:17:40 +0000
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