Appalling but true...

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Appalling but true...

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tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45431
Location: Essex

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 05 8:05 am Post subject: Appalling but true...
Radio 4 Thursday 21:00 Costing the Earth The Best Meal You'll Never Have: Almost 40% of the food produced in the UK never reaches our plates. Tom Heap investigates a trail of shocking waste... or golden opportunity.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28115
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 05 11:32 am Post subject:
That is one hell of a statistic. I wonder a little about the truth of it. For example would it count the massive % rejected on "quality" standards, which then goes as animal feed (sometimes) and hence should not qualify as actual wastage. Though having said that, I know that often waste at this point is really waste because it is not profitable to sell on the waste

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45431
Location: Essex

Posted: Sun Apr 10, 05 11:35 am Post subject:
There's a huge difference in the price of Class I fruit and veg to the stuff that doesn't even make Class II. A big and (I'd imagine) growing issue.

thos

Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 1139
Location: Jauche, Duchy of Brabant (Bourgogne-ci) and Charolles, Duchy of Burgundy (Bourgogne-ça)

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 05 8:37 am Post subject: Re: Appalling but true...

tahir wrote:

Almost 40% of the food produced in the UK never reaches our plates.

The seriousness of this depends on where the measurement takes place. To me one of the nice things about growing my own is that I can just select good-quality crops, the rest goes straight onto the compost bin. Food is lost in a glut because it goes off before it is eaten and it is better to eat the fresh produce at its peak rather than produce that is blown.

There is always food lost in storage - some always goes off.

Similarly I do not feel too guilty about cooking more than I need to serve.

All the above factors are common to commercial food production, so 40% loss does not seem too bad. What is the loss from felling trees to the assembly of an Ikea wardrobe or from clay to a teacup?

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45431
Location: Essex

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 05 8:59 am Post subject:
The biggest problem is how much of it goes into landfill. As far as I know supermarkets don't actually send their food waste for composting but disposal, similarly very few households dipose of their food waste by composting or "green" waste disposal. Maybe TinyClanger knows more on this??

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