Waste Not, Want Not
I don’t know if it was my convent school upbringing, when we had to eat absolutely every last bit of diced carrot and dishwatery mash at lunchtime, but I still hate to waste food. Very rarely will I throw away any leftovers – they are used to stuff peppers, make soup, or invent a weird new dish for my unwitting family.
The point is, the packaging industry is on my side in this. While the UK government is ‘getting tough’ on retailers (and ultimately the producers of food and packaging), demanding that the amount of packaging be reduced, Andrew Parry of WRAP has pointed out: “Increases in packaging of a couple of grams can prevent food waste that has a much bigger impact.” Good for him. Ninety million tonnes of food are thrown away each year inEuropealone, and that is scandalous to my mind.
He also reports that “Food waste has a 10-fold greater environmental impact than the packaging around it.” Even though Europeans implement packaging solutions to protect food and keep it fresh for longer, households still decide not to eat one third of the food they purchase, reports FEFCO.
It’s even worse in low income countries. Selina Juul of Stop Wasting Food reports: “In Sub-Saharan Africa, food capable of feeding 48 million people is wasted annually post-harvest, with lack of packaging and poor infrastructure being the main cause, and this is before it even reaches consumers.
OK, there may be unnecessary and excessive packaging on some products, but let’s not get things out of proportion. An important function of food packaging is protection of the product. What we need is more recyclable materials (and there’s a long way to go in the flexible plastics sector) and more importantly a better infrastructure for recycling them. As well as hating to throw food in the bin, I hate to throw plastic in the bin.
Tags: FEFCO, food waste, recycling, Stop Wasting Food, WRAP
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