Vocal Voices

Or just another skirmish.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is back on his soapbox regarding waste. He is right to do so, as are Jimmy and Jamie and others, but will it be effective?

Last year WoW started a sign-in group of people who back the idea. This morning it had received only 303,218 signatures in total from an adult population of 45 million of us. It has not exactly set the world alight.

The thing is that at the time there were some memorable scenes and people were shocked. In one he was seen standing atop a pile of perfectly good clothes, some almost new. It was a pile that could be built every hour of every day. In another he was in a farmyard furll of parsnips destined to be dug back in because they did not meet with the 'perfection' set down by supermarkets. J & J were also in a field, this time of onions, they were too big or too small for the supermarkets. In another they were iat an eg farm throwing pullet eggs in the bin. Look North did a thing with a dairy farmer who was tipping his milk down the drain because it was cheaper to do that than to sell it the milk conglomerates - he was turning to a beef herd. And just list night on the BBC's Eat well for Less they were going ballistic at pre packaged veg with use by dates on.

All this is criminal when you think that the UK imports 48% of its food, yet 1/3 of the UK crop is ploughed back in or sent to landfill. It is not that it is inedible or diseased, it simply does not look right.

My take is that Hugh and the rest are tackling the wrong people. They should be knocking down the doors of politicians and forcing them to bring in laws to stop these practices.

Well, I just watched it. A lot of rehash and great publicity for Hugh, but I would call it tickling at the edges.

He is right that we consumers are largely to blame, but then goes off on his targets of choice.

However, some other programmes show the other side of the problem, us. The BBC's Eat Well For Less is a good example. In that we have families over consuming what they need, buying in ready made foods in packaging - even fresh vegetables. They throw things away that are perfectly edible due to sell/use by dates. How much total waste is there being created by them.

Waste, in all its forms, is everywhere and twee campaigns will not solve it one jot.

Without the law forcing us and producers to limit waste we are lost.

Workingman wrote:Without the law forcing us and producers to limit waste we are lost.

Perhaps the upcoming harsher economic winds blowing thanks to Brexit may concentrate peoples' minds more ....

Cattle prod more like...

Proof that legislation can work has just come in with the figures for plastic bag use. Since charges were introduced throughout the UK usage is heading to have dropped by 80%!

I am not generally for the State poking its nose in, but there are times when it has to. The shocking amount of unnecessary waste created by all of us is a case in point.

For decades now we've been encouraged to be consumers. Or in other words buy single use items then throw them away. Now they're shocked we've become a throw away culture.

Well I never....

Shopping this morning at a well known store.
Wanted one large potato. There was a prominemt display of bagged potatoes. Had to get an assistant to show me where I could get one potato. Put this in a small plastic bag with a carrot. Got another bag for an onion and and a parsnip.
When I got to the till they had to be weighed and checked individually.
We do not buy ready packaged vegetables or fruit apart from Strawberries.
I can remember when I was working, being able to pick your own strawberries or buy them from the farmer who would have a stall on the side of the road.
The bin for food waste is never more than a quarter full unless I have mowed the lawn.
Walking through the town this morning large areas of the pavement were full of litter.
We always have several plastic bags in the car so we can use one when we go shopping.

We have become worse than useless, especially with food. We throw away tons of perfectly edible foodstuff from our cupboards, fridges and freezers - 4.2 million tons of it every year! That is on top of what was already thrown away from harvest to us while it is in the production chain.

See Cruiser's post above for what it used to be like.