The Unpalatable Food Facts

• We are throwing money away. In Britain the average family bins upwards of £400 worth of food each year. Annually we dispose of the equivalent of £8 Billion of food, a third of all we consume, and this only applies to domestic use. We then have to pay our councils to get rid of it, adding to our tax bills.

• Food waste that goes into landfill decomposes anaerobically and creates tonnes of methane each year, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Avoiding this waste would have the same effect as removing 1/5 of the cars currently driving on British Roads.

• 30-40% of food is wasted before it even reaches our homes, so you can add that on to your own individual quota.

• It takes resources to produce, package and transport our food; which are wasted when we throw it away. That is equal to 15 million tones of CO2 being produced, the equivalent of another fifth of our car use.

• The entire international food aid program amounts to only a fifth of what a single developed nation throws away in a single year.

• What we throw away squanders resources. The irrigation water used by farmers to grow wasted food would be enough for the equivalent domestic water needs of 9 Billion people. Water shortages are already a source of increasing tension in numerous parts of the world.

• Global food production will need to increase by 70% to feed a world population of 9 Billion in 2050. This is a capacity that we are going to struggle to find.

• Water borne nitrates released as a result of intensive farming end up in the sea resulting in ‘dead zones’ due to algal blooms reducing available oxygen. These areas have been doubling in number every decade since the 1960s.

• And finally, our food is highly reliant on dwindling fossil fuel reserves for production, storage and transportation. Alternative power sources such as wind and nuclear may be able to account for some of our needs but what they cannot replace are the raw materials for fertilizers and pesticides which come from these same fossil fuels.