Each year, the UK dumps 6.7 million tonnes, of food. Furthermore, most of the waste - which nationally costs £8bn to treat or dispose of – is sent to landfill where it rots, potentially emitting the potent climate-change gas methane.
The public must realise that while they are scraping food into the bin they are directly fuelling climate change. Waste food now presents a bigger environmental problem than packaging.
The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a government-funded agency that has been investigating food waste, complained that consumers were, in effect, dumping one in three bags of shopping straight in the bin.
In an attempt to change attitudes, Wrap has devised a campaign "Love Food Hate Waste", launched at Borough Market in London yesterday by Ms Ruddock and the TV chefs Ainsley Harriott and Paul Merrett. Wrap's estimate of waste was compiled after polling almost 3,000 households and getting 300 people to keep diaries of what food they threw away. Most waste arose because people had "over-shopped" for a variety of reasons.
This is a Summarised version of a much larger article at The Anaerobic Digestion Community Web Site (Food Waste).