Every year we each throw away enough food to fill Wembley stadium eight times over. Sam Jordison comes clean about his bin habit
There's no arguing with the fact that we in the UK need to cut down on the amount of food we're throwing away. Recent surveys have shown that we chuck away up to a third of the edibles we buy. According to the number crunchers at the government funded anti-waste campaign Wrap this is enough to fill Wembley stadium eight times over.
Those bare facts don't just show up decadence and consumer gluttony. There's a big economic cost. £8bn worth of food is jettisoned annually. That equates to roughly £400 per household - money that most of us could probably put in far better places than our local landfill. Meanwhile, all this waste has huge environmental impact. Firstly because of all the energy that goes into producing the food and then transporting it from farm to shop (all too often from the other side of the world), and secondly because once in landfill, uneaten food starts to emit methane, a gas that ramps up the greenhouse effect even more powerfully than carbon dioxide.
So I'm in full agreement with the recent initiatives to encourage householders to reduce the amount of food they discard. But I must admit that until a few days ago, I blithely assumed that those rules didn't apply to me. When it comes to food, I am far greener than thou. I pick up my shopping in a rucksack, I never eat plastic wrapped ready meals, I get a weekly organic delivery and spend half my time eating weird soup as a result. It's every other blighter causing the problem. I deserve a medal, not more finger wagging.
Or at least, that's what I thought until I too took up the challenge of working out how much food I'm wasting. Last Friday, I purged my fridge and cupboards of everything all the food that was too old to eat and noted down everything that I was going to have to throw away. The results were shocking.
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