UK throws away £8bn of food each year, study claims

The Telegraph 14 Jan 08;

A staggering £8billion-worth of food is thrown away in Britain every year - a third of everything we buy, according to campaigners.

And most of the 6.7 million tons of food we discard from our homes each year - enough to fill Wembley Stadium eight times - could have been eaten, according the Government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap).

And the startling figures refer only to waste from households - when waste from businesses is included the numbers will be considerably higher.

For every three bags of shopping brought home, one ends up in a landfill. Experts said too much food was being thrown away because consumers let it go off in the fridge or cupboard, or portions are too big and leftovers are simply binned.

Wrap estimated that if households cut out such waste it would save 15 million tons of carbon dioxide - the equivalent of taking one in five cars off the road.

The figures come after a Christmas period in which 230,000 tons of food worth around £275 million was thrown away. But a poll found nine in 10 people do not have a clue how much they throw away.

As well as the cost, the wasted food is a major contributor to the production of greenhouse gases. Most of the food thrown away ends up in landfill, where it produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

And campaigners say energy used to produce, package, transport and deliver the food to our homes produces the equivalent of at least 15million tons of carbon dioxide every year.

Wrap has launched a campaign - Love Food Hate Waste - in an attempt to raise awareness about just how much food Britain wastes, with a website giving advice on how to be more food efficient.

Richard Swannell, the director of retail and organics programmes at Wrap, said food wastage was a "very major problem" with financial and environmental implications.

He said: "We throw away 6.7million tons - if we ate it all we would save a staggering amount of money, and reduce our impact on the environment."

Mr Swannell said nearly all ages and social classes were culpable, apart from some people over 60. He added that the causes of the problem could be put into two categories.

"First, we let too much food go off in the fridge and in the cupboard," he said. "And the other is we cook too much food and don't get portioning right, so people get full up and leave stuff and it goes in the bin."

But Mr Swannell admitted Wrap faced a difficult task getting the message about wastage across, as so much of the country was in the dark about the problem.

He said: "There is a huge mountain to climb. But one of the easiest things people can do to help the environment is throw away less food."

Unwanted gifts worth £50m are binned
The Telegraph 14 Jan 08;

Wasteful Britons have binned unwanted Christmas presents worth almost £50 million, according to new research.

The study on behalf of Surrey county council found that the nation's least-loved gifts were toiletries, with a quarter of those asked claiming to have received unwanted soaps and perfumes.
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The survey found that 3.1 per cent of people threw their unwanted gifts straight in the bin.

An average cost of £10 per gift adds up to £48 million destined for the tip.

An enterprising 8.5 per cent turned their disappointment into profit by selling unwanted gifts on eBay or advertising locally.

A third of respondents said they would give their unwanted presents to charity shops, while 20 per cent confessed to saving them to give back to friends and family.