We take for granted that large supermarkets will have so much and such a wide variety of food always available.

But there’s a big problem, for while we are fortunate to have so much food to consume, 4.5 million tonnes of edible food is just discarded by households in the UK each year. Households account for 70% of all edible food waste. Between 15% and 24% of food people pay for in shops is thrown away. In total, wasted food costs the country £19 billion a year and on average £720 for every household. Every day we throw away about 20 million slices of bread, 4.4 million potatoes, 1.2 million tomatoes, 2.7 million whole carrots, 3.1 million glasses of milk, 920,000 whole bananas……

Then there’s a much bigger problem, for about 30% of the damage inflicted on our planet, call it global warming, climate change or greenhouse gas emissions, is caused by our food production. We are obviously not able to stop eating but what if we stopped throwing food away? The 4.5 million tonnes of food being wasted in UK households creates the same pollution as 2.4 million cars or causes more damage to the environment than flying.  Not wasting the 710,000 tonnes of potatoes each year would have the same effect as planting 5.4 million trees.

Reducing food waste is one way to help save the planet.

To find out how to reduce food waste go to www.willinghamlife.org/food-waste/

To get in touch willinghamsustainability@gmail.com

Information sourced from https://wrap.org.uk