Food Waste
Foodbanks
- In the UK around 15 million tonnes of food is thrown away every year
- 20-40% of crops are discarded by farmers because they didn't meet the retailers' standards
- Almost 50% of the total amount of food thrown away in the UK comes from our homes
- We throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year
- 4.4 million tonnes of this could have been eaten
- 808,000 tonnes is past it's date
- 750,500 tonnes looked, smelled or tasted bad
- 465,700 tonnes went mouldy
- 360,600 tonnes left over from cooking
- Bread is Britain's most wasted food
- This costs the average household £470 a year, rising to £700 for a family with children, the equivalent of around £60 a month
- 45-49% of people misunderstand date labels on food
- Methane, produced by rotting food, is 23 times worse than CO2
- An estimated 3.3 billion tonnes annual carbon footprint of food wastage
- If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the benefit to the planet would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off the road
Foodbanks
- 170% rise in numbers turning to foodbanks in last 12 months
- 346,992 people received a minimum of three days emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks in 2012-13, compared to 128,697 in 2011-12 and up from 26,000 in 2008-09
- FareShare’s CEO, Linsday Boswell, said that in the past year the number of charities they were assisting had risen from 720 to 910
- The Red Cross have started collecting and distributing food aid to the needy in Britain for the first time since the Second World War
