~Most Wasted Household Foodstuff

“Cutting food waste in the home needs to be one of the UK’s biggest environmental priorities” - British Retail Consortium. A recent report on food waste by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) has identified that UK households are chucking out the equivalent of 24 meals a month, amounting to 4.2m tonnes of food and drink every year, including 86 million chickens. The top three discarded foods are bread, potatoes and milk. The equivalent of 24m slices of bread, 5.8m potatoes and 5.9m glasses of milk are being wasted daily, while even cakes and pastries make it into the top 10 most wasted items.
Supermarkets To Provide Data on Tonnages of Food Waste
The big supermarkets, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrison’s, M&S, Waitrose and Co-op, under pressure from food waste campaigners, will regularly publish tonnages of food thrown out by stores from 2015, in an effort to cut down on the millions of tonnes wasted each year. The situation was highlighted recently when Tesco admitted it generated 28,500 tonnes of food waste at its stores and distribution centres in the first six months of last year alone. The chain said approx. two-thirds of bagged salad was thrown out, either in-store or by shoppers, and 40% of apples were likewise wasted. Supermarkets have been moving to divert their food waste from landfill, mostly sending it to anaerobic digestion. Just 6% of food waste went to landfill in 2013 compared with 47% in 2005, and they are now committed to sending just 1% of food waste to landfill by 2020. However, with the rise of food poverty and food banks in the UK, the spotlight is on retailers to work with food charities like Fareshare, to enable unsold food to be re-distributed to people in need.
Andrew Opie, director of food sustainability at the BRC (British Retail Consortium), said he believed the new reporting regime would help drive change as part of a broader effort to make retailers more sustainable. He criticised the government’s focus on “marginal waste issues” such as plastic bags, where there are plans to introduce a tax in England in line with systems in place in Wales and Northern Ireland. Opie said “That has been a bit of a distraction from bigger issues on waste”. “Once the issue around carrier bags is over we can really concentrate on the areas which will make the  most difference.” Opie said it was important to look at the whole life-cycle of products, from production to selling, use and disposal, to help cut down on waste and create a “circular economy” in which resources could be re-used.
Friends of the Earth said: “Food waste has been growing over the last few decades because of the way supermarkets have driven consumption. (Supermarket food waste data)… will indicate how over- purchasing and other poor buying practices are occurring, but retailers need to really examine whether their marketing strategies are fit for purpose in today’s resource-confined world. Supermarkets will also commit to cutting absolute carbon emissions by 25%, based on 2005 levels, by 2020. Between 2005 and 2013 retailers have cut total emissions from their stores by just 8% because more outlets have opened, offsetting an average 30%  cut in the amount of carbon emitted  per store.