FOOD WASTE

From entire crops of barely blemished potatoes, to shelves of supermarket sandwiches on their sell-by dates, it is a roll call of waste created by one nation that could lift 150 million people from starvation in one year. The ability of Britons to throw away food deemed imperfect, out-of-date or surplus to requirements was put into sharp relief with the revelation that 30 to 40% of all produce is simply binned. Research based on government statistics has found that, every year, food worth £20bn is discarded on its journey from the farmyard to the fridge. The study puts a figure for the first time on the profligacy of a supply chain where producers are forced to leave fruit rotting on trees because it does not meet supermarket standards and millions are throwing away food for the sake of a "best before" sticker.

Environmentalists and politicians described the statistics as a wake-up call for the Government and consumers to take urgent action to curtail the "monumental and offensive" waste of food. That £20bn of discarded food is equivalent to almost five times what Britain spent last year on international aid, including the ammount of debt relief to the world's poorest countries. With Britain struggling to meet its obligation to cut by almost half the 22.5 million tons of domestic rubbish, including 3.4 million tons of waste food, it sends to landfill sites in the next five years, a senior adviser to Tony Blair said the figures highlighted the iniquities of affluent Britain.

Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Northern Foods and a Labour adviser on rural affairs, said, "This reflects the worst side of us as consumers. We have built a society where we think food is cheap and can be thrown away. We have eyes bigger than our stomachs and buy too much. We eat too much and are too lazy or ignorant to do anything with the leftovers. Food is thrown away because we are obsessed with sell-by dates. Just think of the energy that goes into producing, distributing this food. There will be two to three billion more people to feed on the planet in the next 30 years without the land or water to produce their food. If the rest of the world adopts our behaviour, then the world will have real problems."

The research, conducted for BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth, catalogues the levels of waste on the journey from the farm gate through wholesalers, food processors and retailers to the consumer, using figures produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the National Farmers' Union. Campaigners said the £20bn figure, which follows a separate report last year showing the average British adult throws away £420 of food a year, provided a stark contrast between the consumption of the developed world and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. A study published this month in America after a 10-year survey by the University of Arizona put the figure for food waste in the United States at 40 to 50%. Patrick Nicholson, of the Catholic aid organisation Cafod, said, "We spend nearly five times more as country on food we throw away than on helping the poorest countries."

According to United Nations estimates, £20bn is the amount needed per year until 2015 to stop the 150 million people in Africa suffering from starvation. The level of UK waste will give added urgency to efforts across the food industry to cut surpluses before new European Union rules, which will ban the disposal of food products in landfill sites by 1 January 2006. At least three million tons of produce is thrown away by the retail sector, including supermarkets, and food manufacturers. Instead, companies must explore new disposal methods such as bio-fertilisers and ultra-fast composting. The availability of surplus food has given rise to the phenomenon of "freegans", people who live on food ejected into industrial-sized supermarket dustbins. A charity, Fare Share, now supplies 12,000 meals a day to homeless and vulnerable people using surplus food provided by supermarkets.

The sandwich chain, Pret A Manger, also gives away its unused food to the needy at the end of the working day. Despite such schemes, critics of the supply system criticised the "obsession" of retailers with unblemished produce. One arable farmer who, until 2004, supplied Tesco with potatoes, said, "Two years ago, I was forced to discard a whole crop because the potatoes failed a blemish test. They were all perfectly good to eat but they rotted in the ground because they did not live up to our twisted idea of perfect food. We have our priorities wrong." Campaigners said that it ultimately falls to individual households to cut down on the waste to meet an EU target already achieved by most Scandinavian countries of recycling 45% of waste by 2020.

The current level of domestic waste sent to landfill sites, 22.5 million tons, must be reduced to 6.4 million tons by 2020, requiring a dramatic increase in the use of composting bins supplied by local authorities alongside recycling of packaging and glass. Paddy Tipping, the sitting MP for Nottingham Sherwood and chairman of Labour's environment committee, said, "Food waste has not been tackled well by any of us. The responsibility lies with both the Government and consumers to use this most valuable of commodities more effectively. These figures are a wake-up call which none of us can ignore." There's a nasty, smelly problem out there, and it's not getting any smaller. With the economy booming, we just keep buying things. And then throwing things away. And all the time a tide of rubbish is creeping closer to our front doors.

It stems from the boxes your trainers and your PC come packaged in, and the bottles holding your wine and the carton holding your pizza, and then from the trainers and the PC themselves when you get rid of them, as you soon and surely will, seeking newer and better ones to go with the newer and better decorations and furniture your sitting room requires. Britain's throwaway society is consuming more than ever; it is also, as a consequence, creating waste faster than it has ever done before. Never mind industrial and commercial waste, there is a mushrooming mountain of domestic waste, the stuff that you and I produce at home. Fifty years ago, the main contents of our dustbins was indeed dust, or in fact, ashes from domestic coal fires, upon which much household was burnt, thereby shrinking its volume enormously.

Now we burn nothing at home. We load our bins with a steadily-growing pile of pizza cartons, drink cans, fast-food remnants, packaging of all kinds and mammoth piles of paper. Figures now show that a fifth of the food we buy in supermarkets goes straight into the bin. The throwaway society shows no signs of changing course: consumerism has us too firmly in its grip. But the waste mountain that leaves behind is now starting to spill out of its landfill sites and into politics as those in power wrestle with how to contain it. It will be a canny politician indeed who can cope when the irresistible force of our waste growth finally meets the immovable object of Brussels legislation. (Source: The Independent)

Staff can't take in-date food home so it's thrown out. Food is dumped still in its packaging. Some has never been on the shelf. An investigation has found major chains dump enough food to feed 6.3million people a year and a check of supermarket bins found that much of the food they throw out is not even past its sell-by date. Friends of the Earth have called for tougher measures from the Government to force supermarkets to clean up their act.

Campaigner Viki Hird said, "Supermarkets are falling over themselves to be seen as the greenest, but this is a wakeup call to the scandalous truth behind their claims. The true cost of this waste is passed on to customers in prices and the environment in landfill, while the supermarkets' profits continue to soar." The average person needs to eat around 700lbs of food a year. According to a report by the Sustainable Development Commission, supermarkets throw away 1.6million tons of food annually.

But campaigners believe the real figure is nearer two million and this is backed up by a Sunday Mirror survey which found stores were not even following their own guidelines on waste. An investigation found food thrown out with two or three years still to run on sell-by dates, as well as perfectly edible fresh fruit, vegetables and eggs. Workers told reporters there were simply not enough staff to reduce the prices, so it was sent to landfill, often still wrapped in plastic, which will stop it rotting and take decades to decompose.

At a Sainsbury's superstore staff said it was standard practice to throw away food before its sell-by date, and they're not even allowed to take it home. One said, "Someone just stands there and throws it into the skip. We wish we could buy it but we're not allowed." Pointing to meat on the "reduced" shelf, he added, "Come midnight, anything that hasn't been sold will get taken off the shelf. If it's out of date it will be logged on the computer, put against our losses, then in the skip."

At an Iceland store there were two punnets of in-date strawberries and a pot of fresh doublecream, as well as 20 boxes of Victoria sponge, and tinned sweetcorn with a "best before" of August 2011. Thirty boxes of Terry's All Gold chocolates were still in their delivery boxes and had not even been put on the shelves. Four-pint bottles of milk with nine days still to run had been thrown out, along with nine cans of cola with a date stamp of April 2009.

At Tesco stores in Enfield, North London, and St Albans, Herts, there were 20 boxes of frozen baguettes which did not expire until February 2009. There were also cheese twists stamped December 2008, and 12 boxes of cinnamon rolls "best before" February the following year, along with fresh apples and yoghurts with almost a week to run before they should be taken off the shelves.

At the Co-op in Sherwood, Notts, lettuces, Dairylea Munchables, rolls, peaches, bananas, carrots, crisps and apple pie, all within date. At all of the stores food was found dumped in bins due to expire that day, but with no attempt made to reduce the price for customers. An Iceland spokesman said, "We would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. Please be assured we will undertake a full internal investigation."

And a spokesman for the Co-op said, "Food waste costs money and at all times we aim to keep this to an absolute minimum." A Tesco spokesman said, "We're perplexed. Stores are monitored on their waste every week. Any issues would quickly be dealt with by managers." Two million tons of waste food, as well as feeding 6 million people for a year, could also generate electricity to power around 80,000 homes. Halting the UK's food waste, which pumps the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, would be the equivalent to taking one car in five off the streets.

Nearly half of food packaging can't be recycled but Sainsbury's are launching clothes made from recycled plastic. The supermarket industry in the UK is worth £100billion. Tesco made £2.8billion last year, £5,285 a minute. Stores throwout so much food that a worldwide movement called "freegans" (after vegans) has sprung up to raid bins and live off the spoils. (Source: Sunday Mirror, Jul/08)