Did you know food waste is a big contributor to global emissions?

Wasting food has always been something I have been very uncomfortable with. Perhaps that is because I really love food. Growing up, I was taught to try new things and although I remember not liking certain foods as a child, the desire to try things again as an adult allowed me to enjoy so many more foods later. I’ve also tried to be pretty thrifty, waste is money and I haven't been in a financial position to justify being frivolous. I started cooking from a young age and I suspect the value I have for food may come from that. Many years of trial and error, I consider myself a passable cook and I normally cook for myself from scratch everyday. Learning over time what I can use and how I can use it has given me a sense of value of the ingredients I use and the meals I prepare.

Food waste has always been at least a bugbear, however I haven’t always known the costs that food waste actually has. Now I do know, reducing food waste is a passion. Let me explain why reducing food waste is so important.

Food waste is directly related to global emissions, which we all know contributes to climate change. In fact, 8-10% of all global emissions can be attributed to food waste. In the UK most people don’t see a clear connection between emissions and food waste. WRAP released a report stating that 2/3 of brits don’t see that connection. This is in comparison to ½ of brits seeing a direct connection with aeroplane travel and emissions, despite this only contributing to 3%. When you think about it, I can understand why people don’t make this connection. Food is biodegradable, so the thought process surrounds the idea that when the food is disposed of it decomposes. Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as this.

When food, or any organic material is put into landfill, it gets covered over. And one of the most important things that organic material needs to break down is oxygen. This is why vacuum packing food is so effective in maintaining shelf life. But, landfill doesn’t vacuum pack that food, it provides a place that bacteria can thrive, inhibit oxygen interaction, and start producing greenhouse gases including methane. And guess what… methane has a warming potential of 21x that of CO2! Not only are there emissions, but food in landfills creates a more unsanitary environmen. Not that many people are likely to be wading through a landfill, but it makes a perfect haven for infestations like rats and seabirds which have the potential to spread disease.

That is just the waste end, let’s look at the production involved in making food. A piece of meat for example, say a sirloin beef steak. Okay you might have lost £10 from the supermarket when you throw it away, but does it just boil down to that? Well, simple answer.. no. The sirloin steak you bought was part of a cow that lived on the planet for between 1-5 years. The cow had to be fed, watered, lived in a given space on land and had a farmer look after it for that time. The cow’s food had to be grown, this takes land use, water, fertilisers, potentially pesticides and of course: time. There are other impacts including significant reduction in biodiversity from land- use, and cattle associated greenhouse gases like methane, in addition to energy involved in packaging and transport. So if you leave your sirloin steak for too long and have to throw it away, you aren’t just throwing away a steak, you are throwing away all the resources and energy involved in making it- effectively it took years to produce so it seems absolutely absurd to let it spoil and throw it away!- so why do we do it?

Well there are many contributors as to why we waste the amount of food that we do. In the UK we waste on average 165kg of edible food (excluding the inedible parts) per household, per year equating to £500 (WRAP, 2020) which seems ridiculous when you consider most people could really do with that extra cash!

With busy lifestyles including running a household, long working hours and commutes, trying to fit in fitness regimes, hobbies and socialising, eating becomes something to fuel quickly with little preparation, thought or consideration for nutrition. Trying to cook a well thought out meal for one person, let alone a family within a high-pressure lifestyle, almost becomes impossible for some. People revert to quick and easy meals, often with poor nutrition. But does this matter, if you eat all the food, nutritious or not, surely it isn’t waste? Well if you think environmentally, food with poor nutritional content is waste, the energy in the food hasn't served a purpose. Overconsumption is considered a form of food waste for the same reason. Both have potential health implications associated including diet related illness like diabetes or obesity and malnutrition.

Portion sizes can be an issue, without proper understanding of how much you should be eating, it is easy to misjudge and end up with leftovers that may be wasted. This may be because you just don't fancy eating the same thing again, you forget about it, it's stored incorrectly and it spoils quickly, or it's immediately disposed of.

The buying culture of food has become a system of accessibility to a magnitude of products, the main goal is to sell. Retailers will put on offers including multibuys enticing people into buying too much for what they need because it is cheaper than buying singularly. The enticement of products due to packaging or based on impulse desire can lead to unnecessary food waste.

So what is the answer? Well, as with all environmental issues, there is no simple answer. It entirely depends on the limitations to the individual situation. There are bigger systemic problems to address which I will go into in future posts. However, I can provide some items of advice which can help to reduce food waste on an individual level, which may not be applicable to everyone, but hopefully some can be used.

1. Shop little and often. Unless you live miles away from the shops, if you can shop for what you need for a few days at a time. This can seriously help reduce buying excess food that gets forgotten about. A helpful addition to this advice is planning meals and shop for those meals. If you need excess snacks, then buy long life products to supplement your meals. Then you can grab from the cupboard when needed with little risk of them going off.

2. Do not shop when you are hungry (or hungover), you will end up buying impulse food buys and potentially overconsume or buy things you won't ever eat.

3. Cook meals from scratch. If you have the time in your schedule, cook meals properly, learn to cook and learn what nutrition you need to balance the meals. You will really start to understand the value of food, you will learn how much you actually need to eat, it will generally be much cheaper as you will be using basic/raw ingredients instead of ready-made meals. Cooking can be a hobby and satisfy a productive past-time, in addition to being much nicer than ready made meals.

4. Weigh your food. It's easy to misjudge how much pasta or rice that you need before you are full. For your ideal portion it will take trial an error to get it right but it's certainly a good habit to get into to avoid having leftovers. If you do end up with leftovers- use or freeze them. Make sure you go through your perishable food in the fridge and use it in your meals before buying new food.

5. IF you have to throw away food, use a local food collection service, and follow their guidelines and if you have a garden, most veg waste/coffee grounds and egg shells can be composted and in a year or so you can get a continuous supply of compost to use in your garden.

The important thing is to remember is that food is great, so why are we wasting it? It has many cultural influences, it really can be the highlight of a person's day, it certainly is mine. Special, high energy food should be a treat, and when its treated that way it makes it more special. Eating healthy, nutritious home-cooked will enrich your life. Reducing waste and really utilising every part of food helps the planet. Taking care in your everyday food choices will make all the difference.

- Miranda Burke

WRAP (2020.) WRAP: Two-thirds of Brits don’t see link between food waste and climate change. Available at: https://www.edie.net/news/5/WRAP--Two-thirds-of-Brits-don-t-see-link-between-food-waste-and-climate-change/ [Accessed: 14 May 2021].