Statistic
The British spend £10 billion on food we don’t eat, which costs taxpayers £1 billion a year to send to landfill
Food Waste and the Environment
Around 6 million tonnes of food waste is collected by local authorities every year – mainly in the residual waste stream (general bin) but increasingly in food-waste kerbside collections. It amounts to a quarter of all food bought. Most of the waste is due to either not consuming the food in time or cooking too much – in all, it amounts to £10.6bn a year that is, in effect, simply thrown away. In addition, another 12 million tonnes of food waste comes from the commercial and industrial sector.
The greenhouse gas emissions associated with avoidable food waste from all sectors in the UK are around 18 million tonnes of CO2 each year. This is roughly equivalent to a quarter of the CO2 produced by all the cars in the UK.
Considerable resources are used unnecessarily to create and dispose of the food and drink that is produced but not consumed, including land and water for agriculture, inorganicfertilisers, transport fuel and packaging materials as well as electricity and gas used in preparing, cooking and for storage at low temperature.
Reducing the amount of food and drink we waste would ease pressure on all these resources, make them available for other purposes and help to reduce global demand, putting downward pressure on prices and allowing more food to be available for those in greatest need. It could also have a positive impact on land-use change such as deforestation
A report by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) concludes with the following (our italics):
“The report includes information on the amount and types of food and drink waste currently found in waste streams collected by Local Authorities. By collecting this component separately – either in food-waste collections, or combined with garden waste – it can be diverted from landfill and used as feedstock for anaerobic digestion or in-vessel composting. Using these methods allows nutrients to be returned to agricultural land, reduces the amount of waste going to landfill, and, in the case of anaerobic digestion, produces biogas, which can be burnt to produce heat and power.”†
