The Food We Waste

Recycle for Gloucestershire is Proud to Support Love Food Hate Waste, a National Campaign aimed at raising awareness about the need to reduce the amount of food we throw away that eventually ends up in landfill.

In the UK we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of food every year, roughly a third of everything we buy. Most of this is avoidable and could have been eaten if only we had planned, stored and managed it better. Less than a fifth is truly unavoidable – things like bones, cores and peelings.

Nearly one quarter of the 4.1 million tonnes of unnecessary food waste is thrown away whole, untouched or unopened. Of this, at least 340,000 tonnes is still in date when thrown away. A further 1.2 million tonnes is simply left on our plates. This all adds up to a story of staggering wastefulness!

For example every day we throw away:

• 5.1 million whole potatoes
• 4.4 million whole apples
• 2.8 million whole tomatoes
• 7 million whole slices of bread
• 1.3 million unopened yoghurts and yoghurt drinks
  

All This Wasted Food is Costly!

In the UK we spend £10.2 billion every year buying and then throwing away good food. That works out at £420 for the average UK household. And for households with children it’s even more - £610 a year. Local councils then spend another £1 billion collecting our food waste and sending most of it to landfill.

Food Waste is also Harmful to the Environment

The food we throw away needlessly is responsible for the equivalent of 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year – that’s the same as the CO2 emitted by one in every five cars on UK roads.

It’s not just the methane that’s released when the food goes to landfill that’s the problem, but also the energy spent producing, storing and transporting the food to us. Put another way, every tonne of food we throw away needlessly is responsible for 4.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.

For more information about the Love Food Hate Waste Campaign visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com