WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) helps individuals, businesses and local authorities in the UK to reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change. (See www.wrap.org.uk). Every day we watch on the television news items about people who are starving in the world. We hear about the damage to our eco systems of intensive farming methods which we are told are necessary to feed the billions of people around the globe. We are told that the only answer to feeding the world is to use genetically modified crops to prevent damage by pests and to help the crops provide greater nutritional value. In fact we may all be better off if we cut down on what we produced and then valued and used the remainder. It’s that simple. Just look at one example shown in the extraordinary survey below. People in the UK pay for, but do not eat £10 billion of food each year’! Can you imagine how much food that is? And this wasted £10 billion, costs the authorities another £1 billion to collect and transport to landfill sites.

This unprecedented study has been conducted into how much food is wasted by UK households, but I very much doubt that any other developed country wherever it is in the world is any different. The results are staggering. This article should appall everyone who reads it and perhaps we should all reflect on the fact that while we are arguing about how we can feed the starving millions, we should look to ourselves for the answer.

Here are just a few of the results taken from the study in the UK:

• Between us we throw away around 6.7 million tonnes of food every year.
• For every three bags of groceries that we take home from the supermarket, we throw one in the bin before opening it.
• People in the UK pay for, but do not eat, £10 billion of food every year. Pounds Sterling – not dollars!
• That’s an average of £420 per household.
• For families with children it’s more – an average of £610 a year.
• It costs another £1 billion annually for local authorities to collect and send most of it to landfill.

Can you imagine the cost of all this to the consumer, the local authorities and the wider economy? Can you imagine what £10 billion looks like or what we could do with it? And that is just in one country. As I mentioned above, I have no reason to believe that it is any different in the other developed nations.

The figures are truly horrifying and when you think that 70,000 children die of starvation each year throughout the world it really puts the whole thing into perspective.

More Examples from the study:
Every day in the UK, for example, we throw away:

• 7 million slices of bread (worth £140 million a year);
• 5.1 million whole potatoes (worth £140 million a year); and 4.4 million whole apples (worth £300 million a year).

Other staple items that don’t quite make the top 10 include:

• 660,000 whole eggs (worth £50 million a year);
• 260,000 unopened packs of cheese (worth £40 million a year); and 1 million slices of ham (worth £30 million a year).

Whole fruit and vegetables are wasted in large quantities. As well as the potatoes and apples that make the top 10, every day in the UK we throw away:

• 2.8 million tomatoes (worth £80 million a year);
• 1.6 million bananas (worth £90 million a year);
• 1.4 million mushrooms (worth £30 million a year);
• 13.2 million grapes (worth £40 million a year); and 1 million plums (worth £70 million a year).

Processed and ‘convenience’ food also gets wasted routinely – every day
in the UK we throw away:

• 1.2 million whole sausages (worth £60 million a year);
• 550,000 rashers of bacon (worth £50 million a year);
• 330,000 unopened processed meat-based meals(worth £60 million a year); and 330,000 chicken portions (worth £70 million a year).

But it’s not only staple foods that are wasted. Surprisingly we also waste treats
and luxury items, for example:

• 82,000 whole dessert cakes and gateaux every day (worth £20 million a year);
• 300,000 unopened packets of crisps (worth £20 million a year);
• 700,000 unopened packets of chocolate and sweets (worth £40 million a year); and 2,900 unopened cans or bottles of lager a day (worth just less than £10 million a year).

And every year, 20,000 tonnes, or £66 million worth, of breakfast cereals are
thrown away – a story that will be familiar to families across the country, who
rush to get to work or school and leave their breakfast unfinished.
Some of the food we throw away is still in date – at least 340,000 tonnes of it –
with long shelf-life products featuring strongly including drinks, condiments,
dried foods and confectionery.

The imperative is clear: our food habits, of which this summary is but a snapshot, are costing us and the environment dear. The energy expended by business and industry to produce, process, transport –often refrigerated – and sell the food we then waste is immense. Coupled with the energy we expend travelling to stores, transporting our purchases back home and then storing and refrigerating them, this is a story of inefficiency and wastefulness of huge proportions.

This information can be put into context if we remember that according to Lester R. Brown writing on the Earth Policy Institute web site (see http://earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update69.htm for the full article), the World Bank reports that for each 1 percent rise in food prices, caloric intake among the poor drops 0.5 percent. Millions of those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, people who are barely hanging on, will lose their grip and begin to fall off.

Projections by Professors C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer of the University of Minnesota four years ago showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing from over 800 million to 625 million by 2025. But in early 2007 their update of these projections, taking into account the biofuel effect on world food prices, showed the number of hungry people climbing to 1.2 billion by 2025. That climb is already under way.

Since the budgets of international food aid agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food prices shrinks food assistance. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supplying emergency food aid to 37 countries, is cutting shipments as prices soar. The WFP reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related illnesses.
This above is a short set of highlights from a comprehensive research study more details of which are available on a more comprehensive version of the report which you can download. Please click here to see the report.

Editors note:
WRAP’s 3 primary targets are:

• SENDING LESS TO LANDFILL
WRAP will stop 8 million tonnes of waste materials from the household, industrial and commercial waste streams going to landfill.

• REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS
WRAP’s programmes will save 5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.

• INCREASING ECONOMIC IMPACTS
WRAP will deliver around £1.1 billion of positive economic impacts for business, local authorities and consumers

Policy waste