Following the festive season and New Year’s celebrations, food plays a large role in many families as it provides a chance for them to gather and enjoy something with each other. However, the amount wasted is increasing just because we Brits can’t finish what is on our plates.
The average British household now wastes about four weeks’ worth of food a year – mainly fruit, vegetables and bread – with most families wasting an average of £470 (£700 for families with children) which is near £60 a month and people in the UK throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink every year when over half could still have been consumed. We tend to waste so much food because we either cook/prepare too much or we simply do not use it in time according to Love Food, Hate Waste, a worldwide campaign dedicated to reducing food waste.
Supermarkets are also major contributors to food waste as they throw away 115,000 tonnes of food per year (equal to about £230 million), the majority of it still being edible at its time of disposal, when hundreds of thousands of Londoners wonder where their next meal is coming from.
Data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations shows that worldwide the situation is much worse as roughly one third of the food produced internationally for human consumption yearly, which is approximately 1.3 billion tonnes, gets lost or wasted.
Many schemes have been put in place to try and combat this problem, with many private organisations getting involved and events being held, such as locally, the very first Redbridge Urban Food Festival (held in Ilford) to promote sustainable eating was held in September 2016.
by Temi Atanlusi, Bancroft's School
