Britons are throwing away £10bn ($20bn )worth of food that could be eaten each year, £2bn more than estimates have previously suggested
The average household, ranging from a single older person to a group of students, is chucking out £420 of such food each year and the sum rises to £610 for the average family with children.
About £6bn of the wasted annual food budget is food that is bought but never touched – including 13m unopened yoghurt pots, 5,500 chickens and 440,000 ready meals dumped in home rubbish bins each day. The rest is food prepared or cooked for meals but never eaten because people have misjudged how much was needed and don’t eat the leftovers.
The complete £10bn consists of food that could have been eaten, not including peeling and bones, the researchers say. Tackling the waste could mean a huge reduction in CO2 emissions, equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road.
The new estimates are based on interviews with 2,715 households in England and Wales, backed up by analyses of waste collected from 2,138 of them. Liz Goodwin, Wrap’s chief executive, said the findings were shocking. “Food waste has a significant environmental impact. The research confirms that it is an issue for us all, whether as consumers, retailers, local or central government. I believe it will spark a major debate about the way food is packaged, sold, stored at home, cooked and then collected when it is thrown out.”
– from www.guardian.co.uk