DCSIMG

What a waste


Published on Tuesday 22 January 2008 11:42

Food, glorious food . . . so why do we throw so much of it away? Almost seven million tons of household food is dumped in landfill sites in the UK each year not including the waste from businesses and the public sector.

As well as the cost, the wasted food is a major contributor to the production of greenhouse gases, as it produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

To tackle climate change the Government is bringing in new legislation to address this problem and reduce biodegradable waste on landfill sites.

In Northamptonshire a partnership of all the local authorities is working on a strategy to reduce food waste.

Interim executive officer Steve Taylor said: "The majority of food waste goes to landfill with normal waste.

We are looking at alternatives at the moment as part of legislation requiring biodegradable waste to be diverted away from landfill."

This in turn is in response to EU legislation requiring a reduction in greenhouse gases.

So what are local retailers, businesses and institutions doing with their food waste and are steps being taken to stop it from ending up on landfill?

The Barn Restaurant at the Old Dairy Farm in Upper Stowe serves about 500 customers and, every day, about three black bags worth of waste are produced.

Proprietor Anne Marshall said she estimated that about 50 per cent of the restaurant's total wastage is made up of food "derivatives" such as potato peelings, eggshells and coffee residue.

The rest of the waste is largely made up of non-recyclable packaging.

Ms Marshall said: "We don't have a lot of waste as most of the food we serve gets eaten. You go to some places and you can see how much goes back to the kitchen and that is a problem.

"Most of the food waste we have is left over from the preparation of food.

It is things like vegetable waste, but we have an answer here in that things like carrot peelings or apple peelings all go to the animals here, but we can't give them potato peelings."

She continued: "As far as our cooking oil is concerned, we are required by law to dispose of it safely. We have a contract with our oil supplier who takes it away and it becomes bio fuel. We don't throw away any milk bottles, glasses or cans."

The canteen at Roade School in Northamptonshire currently fills about five 1,100 litre wheelie bins with food and its related rubbish each week.

But this year has marked a turnaround for the school; waste from all food technology classes is collected and used as compost for the school's horticulture section.

Ross Parkinson, headteacher, said he hoped eventually the canteen's food waste would be used in the same way.

He said: "We had already established the horticulture section and they had created a large vegetable plot. We decided rather than buy in compost we would do it this way."

Meanwhile at Northampton General Hospital the only food that is wasted is what patients do not eat as most of the meals are bought in pre-prepared.

The production waste from fresh food items varies between six to 11 per cent. All food waste from the hospital is processed through dedicated food waste machines and discharged through the foul drainage system.

A spokeswoman from Marks and Spencer said that although she could not quantify the amount of food waste produced by the Northampton store each week, the shop has a policy to give all food still fit for consumption to charities.

Food which can no longer be sold by the shop, but is still within its use by date, is donated to Nazareth House care home and to Northampton's night shelter.

Trading Standards tackles the over-packing issue

Under the current law if a consumer 'expects' a bottle of whisky to be presented in a cardboard tube, despite it having no hygiene or safety purpose, the over packaging is legal.

Yet millions of tonnes of waste could be reduced each year if products used less packaging.

The get-out clause is if the packaging is 'acceptable to the consumer' then it is not breaking the law.

But what one consumer accepts and another does not, is so subjective that it is almost impossible to bring a prosecution against over packaging.

This legislation comes from the European Union meaning it could take many years to change

.

Meanwhile the Government through the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and Environwise is aiming to persuade and financially motivate companies into changing their packaging voluntarily.

David Hedger, assistant head of Northamptonshire trading standards, explained the constraints of the law: "Some consumers may prefer more packaging as it looks and feels nicer and others will not like it at all.

All companies have to say is we have carried out market research and customers have told us they prefer that packaging.

"Shops also say if their product is in a bigger box it has more shelf presence and they sell more. It is virtually impossible to argue against."

Since the packaging legislation was set up in 1999 there have been just four successful prosecutions nationwide.

Two of these have been in Northamptonshire.

In one case (2000) pieces of meat were being made to look bulkier by being propped up by a hidden layer of plastic and in the other (2004) Office World were prosecuted for sending out goods over the internet in oversized boxes.

Mr Hedger, who is also chairman of the national trading standards panel on environmental issues and is the lead on packaging enforcement, explained: "We did three test purchases and all of them were under 30 per cent full. One was just nine per cent."

Education is now a key part of trading standard's work as enforcement is so difficult.

One scheme is Environwise which offers advice to small and medium sized businesses on how they can reduce all aspects of their waste and save money.

Piloted in Northamptonshire, Environwise has already identified savings of 400,000 a year in local enterprises.

Tackling the larger companies is WRAP which has already signed up 90 per cent of the UK grocery market to the Courtauld Commitment.

The aim of the scheme is to make retailers find solutions to the over packing culture by using innovative packaging, reducing the weight of packaging, increasing the use of refill and self-dispensing systems and increasing the amount of recycled content.

Asda, Boots, Budgens, the Co-operative Group, Londis, Iceland, Marks & Spencer, Morrison's, Sainsbury's, Somerfield, Tesco and Waitrose have all voluntarily signed up to the agreement in 2005, which aims to see reductions by 2010.

Some of the excess packaging (as illustrated in the picture above) is due to a desire to make everyday foods look like gifts for a particular occasion such as the bottle of sparkling wine placed in a box for Valentine's Day.

The Co-operative group have stopped selling tomato puree tubes in an additional cardboard box but many other supermarkets have yet to do this.

Meanwhile many fruits and vegetables are unnecessarily shrink wrapped in plastic because stores argue that some customers do not like to buy food that may have been touched by other people.

If you are a consumer who has a complaint about packaging issues please contact trading standards via Consumer Direct 0845 4040506.

To contact Environwise for a free business audit call 0800 585794.


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