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DCL
A new report has just revealed that the British toss out $20 billion worth of food each year. Try to imagine $20 billion worth of food--just try it. Picture the half-eaten sandwiches, rotten apples, bags of chips, expired gallons of milk, and scraps of meat. Now picture 8.3 million tons of it all.
According to the study, that's exactly how much refuse British consumers create in food waste every year--and much of it is avoidable. While an estimated two thirds of that waste is deemed "unavoidable" by the study, and refers to fruit and vegetables that go bad and food thrown out as a result of too large of servings, the final third was deemed "possibly avoidable", and referred to byproducts of meals like fruit skins and bread crusts.
The stats offered by the study are staggering. The Independent reports:
the total weight of food waste generated per year amounts to 25% of that purchased. For food and drink together, the 8.3 million tons of annual waste represents 22% of purchases. Making up the largest portion of waste by weight are fresh vegetables and salad, coming in at a quarter of all food waste. Nearly 50% of purchases in this category are wasted.
And I would argue that both "unavoidable" and "possibly unavoidable" are nonsense terms: all the problematic food wasting habits cited in the study are very much avoidable. And it's deceptively simple to do so as well: compost your fruit skins and uneaten scraps, pay better attention to buying and eating fruits and veggies on time, and lend a more frugal eye towards servings. Voila--your food waste is nearly nil.
Of course, it isn't that simple--getting millions of people to change their behavior requires slow, painful paradigm shifts. But those shifts have to start somewhere--so maybe it's time to start watching what we eat. And more importantly, watching how we dispose of what we don't.
