FOOD WASTE: Wasteful Britons throw out £15 BILLION of food every year,

• By Ruki Sayid

18 Oct 2013 18:48

Wasteful Britons throw out £15 BILLION of food every year, new research shows

Published in  Mirror News 18 Oct 2013 18:48

Experts say that despite rising food prices, British households are still buying and cooking far more food than we can eat

Wasteful: British households throw out £15billion of food a year

More than £15billion of food is binned every year, with households wasting an average £572 of produce.

And a poll found half of us chuck unopened food if it is past the “best before” date.

The shocking figures come as a food bank charity revealed the number of needy people relying on handouts for survival has tripled in a year.

A study supported by Love Food Hate Waste found on average, each household throws out £572 worth of food a year with ready meals, fresh meat and fruit juices the most likely to be dumped.

Worringly almost half of families admitted unopened packs of food ended up in the bin as they had gone past their best before date.

A similar number confessed they cooked too much and threw out the surplus instead of using the leftovers to create another dish or freezing them.

The research for technology giant Samsung paints a picture of a nation divided into the food haves and have nots with the West Midlands named the food waste capital of Britain.

Households there dump £731.64 of food a year - enough to make up 73 Red Cross food parcels for families struggling to make ends meet.

Hunger: Volunteers sorts through donations of food at the Trussell Trust in London.

AFP

Londoners are in second place with £659.36 worth of food thrown away and the North East third, wasting £632.84 of food.

The Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks across the UK, said it handed out supplies to more than 350,000 people between April and September this year - three times more than last year.

Experts say we are guilty of over-shopping and despite rising food prices, are still buying and cooking more food than we can eat.

The survey of 2,000 adults found eight out of 10 did not realise eggs can be frozen by cracking them open and putting the yolk and egg white into an airtight container before freezing.

Emma Marsh, head of Love Food Hate Waste said: “There are simple steps we can all take to cut food waste, such as making better use of our fridges and freezers.”

It will be publishing a detailed report on Britain’s food mountain next month.

Check out my latest e-book entitled: "Social Media Marketing in Agri-Foods: Endless Profit and Painless Gain"

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Thanks for taking the time

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY AIMS TO CURB FOOD WASTE

Posted June 5, 2013 in Food Product Design

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J.—Today is World Environment Day (WED) and in support of  its "Think.Eat.Save" theme, Sealed Air Corporation joins the effort to encourage action to eliminate food waste, which currently exceeds 1.3 billion tons each year.

Through its SmartLife™ initiative, Sealed Air Corp. has focused its R&D efforts on solutions that eliminate waste throughout the entire value chain. It highlights that food processors can reduce food waste by preventing contamination and production yield loss and by ensuring food is distributed without damage or spoilage to retailers and restaurants. Retailers can also help by reducing in-store prep losses, damage and product expiration prior to sale. The foodservice segment can contribute by providing meals and ingredients in portions to match varying customer demands and by extending food quality life while minimizing product loss during storage. Also, at-home food waste can be lessened by proving consumers more shelf life for perishable products, reducing spoilage or damage during storage and enabling food portioning that helps with meal planning.

"With regard to food waste, we are more conscious of the impact our actions have on the environment yet our society throws away billions of tons of edible food each year that ends up in our landfills, releasing methane gas into the atmosphere," said Ronald Cotterman, Ph.D., vice president of sustainability at Sealed Air Corp.

Consumers throw away nearly as much food as they eat, devastating our environment, communities and the economy. In the United States, food waste consumes 300 million barrels of oil each year, is responsible for one quarter of all fresh water consumption and represents an economic loss of $160 billion per year. Wasted food translates into lost profits for famers and producers, higher prices for consumers and reduced food security for those who cannot afford enough to eat.

A 2012 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations revealed nearly 50% of all fruits and vegetables in the European Union go to waste, with losses occurring during agricultural production, processing, distribution, in the supermarkets and by the consumers. According to the report, 20% of the fresh produce is lost due to accidental damage during threshing or fruit picking, damage by insects, mechanical damage and/or spillage during harvest operation and crops sorted out post-harvest following quality requirements by supermarkets and other companies. The lack of tuning between supply and demand is another reason for losses.

Sources:

• Sealed Air: Sealed Air Highlights Its Commitment to eliminate Food Waste on World Environment Day

Check out my latest e-book entitled: "Social Media Marketing in Agri-Foods: Endless Profit and Painless Gain".  

The book is available on Amazon and Kindle for $4.99 USD. Visit amazon/Kindle to order now:
http://www.amazon.ca/Social-Media-Marketing-Agri-Foods-ebook/dp/B00C42OB3E/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1364756966&sr=1-1

Written by Bruce MacDonald, a 30 year veteran of the Agri-food industry, in "Social Media Marketing in Agri-Foods: Endless Profit and Painless Gain", Bruce applies his background and expertise in Agri-foods and social media to the latest trends, tools and methodologies needed to craft a successful on-line campaign. While the book focuses on the Agri-food market specifically, I believe that many of the points Bruce makes are equally applicable to most other industries.

3 Food + Technology Trends Go Mainstream in 2012

Last year we saw the “end” of Twinkies, the explosion of caffeinated foods, and even DIY  marshmallows.

According to Forbes, three food issues of great importance finally made it into mainstream American consciousness in 2012, giving us hope for real change in the food system.  Food waste, humane animal treatment (including antibiotic use) and food labeling all took the leap and are now common household topics.

And in all three cases, people are using the internet and a host of apps to discuss these topics, to educate the public and to inspire each other to act, and buy, better.

1. Food Waste

A tremendous amount of attention is finally being paid to the amazing amount of wasted food in the world; by some estimates a full third of what is grown never makes it to the table (or to the animal trough, as the case may be).  The Natural Resources Defense Council, for example, just released a new study on “crop shrink” – the difference in the amount of food produced and that which is available in the market.  Turns out a full 30 percent of fruits and vegetables are often not even harvested (especially fruits like nectarines and plums), and another 30 percent maybe tossed simply because they don’t look perfect (yet are still perfectly edible).

This year too, a number of online resources worked to educate people about the issue and help them tackle food waste.   Love Food, Hate Waste is a UK based site providing resources to learn to waste less food.  Wasted Food is a blog which links readers to even more resources by Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland.  Tristram Stuart, who wrote Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, was invited to the prestigious TED Conference this year and gave a passionate, and convincing, talk about food waste.  New services to help limit food waste are also becoming available via the web – check out Compost Cab, for example, or the Gleaning Networkdeveloped by the Society of St. Andrew.

2. Humane Animal Treatment

Two popular American groups came out swinging in 2012 to promote better treatment of farm animals: the Humane Society of the United States andConsumers Union (a division of Consumer Reports).  Both helped bring important issues into mainstream consciousness and used social media to spread the word about their campaigns.

The Humane Society (in the U.S. and internationally) have long been critical of factory farming.  But in 2012 they took the fight up a notch and successfully pressured many large scale fast food and grocery chains to end the use of gestation crates in hog facilities.  The group has used its website to help promote “Humane Eating,”  meat-free meals, and runs an impressiveYouTube Channel with an entire section dedicated to issues in factory farming.

Consumers Union, on the other hand, is working to end the use of antibiotics in meat production.  The group has conducted independent tests, written countless articles and has appeared on major news networks speaking out against the practice.  They also began the “Meat Without Drugs” campaign online, where more than 550,000 people have now signed a petitionrequesting Trader Joe’s source and sell meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.

3. Food Labeling

Like the demand for better animal treatment, consumers are increasingly demanding better labeling of food products.

In California, the “Right to Know” initiative to label genetically engineeredfoods made it onto the ballot by collecting nearly one million signatures and launched an impressive social media campaign, trending 4 times on Twitter in the U.S. and receiving more than 2 million click-throughs on Facebook from Californians aged 18 and over.

In the end, the campaign lost by only 400,000 votes, but the fun has not stopped there.  Now Just Label It has launched a nation wide campaign to require genetically engineered foods to be legally labeled, and are running an online petition asking Congress and the Food and Drug Administration for better labeling.  Currently the petition has 1.2 million signatures and the campaign’s video has been watched almost 100,000 times.

But labeling demands are not only for GMOs.  Several class action suits made it into court this year questioning “all natural” labeling, and brands as seeming diverse as Ben and Jerry’s, Frito-Lay, and Tropicana are all currently defending how processes and ingredients not found in nature can be called “natural.”

Of course, technology has responded by making information more readily available about the food products lining your grocery shelves.  The Non-GMO Project (available for ipad/pod/phone only) lists foods certified “non-GMO,” and the Pesticide Action Network has released an app to help consumers better understand pesticides (also only for apple products).  And theFooducate app and website can help consumers wade through the existing labels on specific products to learn what is in them and what those ingredients and claims mean.