Britain declares war on food waste

Andrew Grice
London Independent
Monday, July 7, 2008

The Government is to launch a campaign to stamp out Britain's waste food mountains as part of a global effort to curb spiralling food prices.

Supermarkets will be urged to drop "three for two" deals on food that encourage shoppers into bulk-buying more than they need, often leading to the surpluses being thrown away. The scandal of the vast mountains of food that are thrown away in Britain while other parts of the world starve is revealed in a Cabinet Office report today. It calls for a reduction in food waste: up to 40 per cent of groceries can be lost before they are consumed due to poor processing, storage and transport.

The report says UK households could save an average of £420 per year by not throwing away 4.1 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten.

Gordon Brown said he would make action to tackle the soaring cost of food a priority at the G8 summit starting today in Japan. "If we are to get food prices down, we must do more to deal with unnecessary demand, such as by all of us doing more to cut our food waste which is costing the average household in Britain around £8 per week," he told journalists on board the plane to the summit.

Mr Brown's determination to act follows The Independent's campaign to reduce waste through excessive packaging of food in supermarkets. The Government is to launch a major offensive to encourage supermarkets, restaurants, schools and all public sector bodies as well as householders to try to cut down dramatically on the amount of food they throw away.

Full article here.

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