Vocal Voices

Tesco has produced figures suggesting that it threw away nearly 30,000 tonnes of food - from distribution to customer - in six months: 60,000 tonnes per year. Say the top six do roughtly the same and it's 360,000 tonnes; add in a bit for the independents and it could come to 500,000 tonnes a year. Shock, horror! And what a lovely big stick to hit the supermarkets with.

Yet the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates that 15 million tonnes of food is wasted each year...... That must mean that quite a lot of it is wasted by us, you and me, once we get it home. There must also be a lot of waste in the various catering sectors, from staff canteens to posh restaurants to greasy spoons. Or its figures are wrong!

It is fine and dandy for the food zealots to pin the blame on supermarkets, but the problem is more complex than that. From what I see when I go shopping, and not just to supermarkets, is that a lot of us could do with lessons in how to be shop-wise.

Not me yer onner..... no waste here.

Me neither, nothing gets wasted here either!

Nor here. I don't do BOGOFs on fresh food and only buy the quantities I need........... So is this another "guilt trip" by TPTB, and are WRAP's figures remotely correct?

Could be!

I honestly don't know Frank.
I look out onto our close on bin day and there are two families in particular who, whichever bin is out for emptying that day, have excess waste to be taken away. In that their bin lids are wide open and won't close. The one family of five has two household waste bins and one at least is always too full for the lid to close. Same with their recycling. Our household waste bin is usually less than half full after two weeks (and the old sawdust and newspaper from the guinea pig cage goes in that bin too) so how can a family with one extra person generate so much extra waste?

In some ways I blame slavish addiction to ridiculous best before dates. We need "unusable by" dates not "would not be totally fresh and first quality after" dates....

In our house very little gets wasted but that's mainly down to Mrs S who cooks large potions and freezes the remainder as a matter of course.

Many people buy pre packaged and have no clue how to manage supplies. Many don't even know how to cook and if you watch the TV ads, more of whom are going on about "don't cook we'll do it for you", what can you expect from a TV addicted generation?

I have just seen the news and am now convinced that there is a motive behind the figures.

The 15 million tonne figure came up again, obviously designed to shock. But when it is broken down it works out at an average of 700g (1.5 lbs) for every single man, woman and child every day. Now that is just not feasible but was never mentioned. The reporter also visited a recycling plant here in Leeds. We were told that between 25% and 30% of all waste was organic - potatoes and carrots were mentioned. The impression given was that all of the organic material was edible food, which it clearly was not.

Yes, there is waste and yes, households are responsible for some of it, and yes, we could do better, but please stop beating us over the head about it and go tackle the real culprits. It might also help if we accepted that some waste is inevitable.

I will be watching Rick Stein's India where he will wander through streets and markets chock-a-block with food. Even in a place like India, where food is at a premium, quite a lot of it will go to waste as it will be "off" by the end of the day.

Rodo wrote:Not me yer onner..... no waste here.

And certainly not here either - I doubt that we waste more than 1-2% of the food we buy. Nothing gets thrown out, we use up everything including the OOD stuff, it's only what might get left on a plate.

Suff wrote:In some ways I blame slavish addiction to ridiculous best before dates. We need "unusable by" dates not "would not be totally fresh and first quality after" dates....

I think this is a very valid comment. I also think it raises questions as to whether the supermarkets themselves have their purchasing (and pricing) policies all wrong, and are simply buying in way too much for resale ....

I think the biggest culprits of food waste are the supermarkets and shops.

Yes, the normal household is not particularly good with their wastage but the supermarkets seem to throw a huge amount of food away every day just because it has reached a best before date.

They should be forced to give it to homeless shelters, etc so that it would get used.

It is terrible that a household throws away abit of veg at the end of the week but it is criminal that supermarkets, markets, etc throw away so much of the stuff.