Will increased food prices lead to less waste?
In the last fifty years food has become a cheap and plentiful commodity - at least in the world's developed countries - and consumers now face a bewildering choice of products on the supermarket shelf. But are those days coming to an end?
Recently food prices have rocketed, taking many by surprise. Recent Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures show wholesale food prices rose by 7.4 per cent over the past 12 months - more than three times the headline rate of inflation and the highest since records began in 1992. So why are food prices increasing so rapidly?
Partly it's down to changing diets in emerging economies, most notably in China, where people eat three times more meat today than they did in 1980. Farmers, particularly in the United States, are also growing less food with some receiving subsidies for growing biofuels at the expense of food crops. To compound matters, the spiralling cost of crude oil means there has been a global increase in the cost of growing, harvesting and transporting crops.
Despite the increasing cost of food, the UK still throws out almost seven million tonnes of food each year, around £400 of food per household. Much of this ends up rotting in landfill, producing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. So the solution to the current food crisis would appear to be a no-brainer - we need to use the food that we do grow more efficiently.
It could be argued that increasing food prices should make people more careful about what they throw away, but cutting food waste requires a step change in people's attitudes and behaviour. Waste Watch believes consumers need more information about how to choose sustainably produced food and how to reduce waste while saving themselves money in the process.
The biggest four supermarkets in the UK account for around three-quarters of the food sold every day and play a key role in any shift in behaviour. We believe retailers should resist running value-led promotions like BOGOFs (Buy One Get One Free) which result in people buying more food than they need and then having to throw it away. Retailers could also be doing more to promote locally produced and healthier, unprocessed foods.
But it would be wrong to place all the blame for food waste on supermarkets. The demand for heavily processed, and heavily packaged, convenience foods has come to the fore as a result of changes in our own society and lifestyles. Today we spend less time preparing meals than we used to and instead demand fast, convenient and readily available food.
The government could play a role by funding more life-skills training around food preparation as well as educating school pupils about waste prevention. Waste Watch itself recently ran a successful food waste prevention initiative for primary school children in Kent. Government could also do more to champion local food sources, support rural communities and assist domestic self-sufficiency.
It's not hard to reduce food waste at home: ensure your fridge is at the correct temperature to increase shelf life, plan meals ahead, use leftovers, and so on - many more tips are available at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com. Nonetheless, we will always produce a certain amount of non-edible food waste.
The best option for disposing of non edible food waste - for example peelings and tea bags - is to compost at home, closing the recycling loop at a household level. If this isn't possible, new technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD) could provide a solution. There are now AD plants operating successfully on a commercial scale, turning food waste into oil-free fertilizer and a less environmentally harmful fuel called biogas which can be used to produce electricity or run transport schemes.
In the past, acting on environmental concerns has sometimes been seen as a luxury that can be ditched in times of recession or economic hardship. Reducing the amount of food you waste proves that sustainable behaviour and saving money can go hand in hand.
The idea of 'waste not, want not' is hardly new, but it is definitely one worth revisiting for environmental as well as economic reasons.
To find out more download our information sheet How can you get more residents to participate in food waste schemes?
