As you’re probably aware food waste is a fairly hot topic in the recycling world. But what you may not know is that roughly one third of the food produced is never eaten, and to produce this waste food takes a land mass roughly the size of China.
When you consider that a percentage of people in this world never have enough to eat let alone waste this seems if not criminal, then morally corrupt.
In the western world we all know what we should be doing to minimize waste, but most of us are guilty of putting a little bit too much on our plates, of leaving that head of broccoli (the most thrown away vegetable) in the fridge for a bit too long or of buying something to get another one free when we don’t really need it.
No one needs to be told to shop more sensibly or use a smaller plate, we know that’s what we should do. But what happens to all this waste if it’s not properly disposed of?
In most council areas the waste food is collected in the small green caddy that we all know and love to hate. But recently some councils have taken the backward step of asking residents to put their food waste into the general waste bins.
The question is, will this food end up in landfill? And if it does, why does that matter?
It matters because food is mostly organic material and when it’s buried it begins to break down in a process called ‘anaerobic digestion’. As a by-product of this process greenhouse gasses such as methane and carbon dioxide are produced and released into the atmosphere. They in turn cause global warming which isn’t a fallacy, it does exist, and it is changing our planet forever.
On top of all this, a good deal of our food has travelled thousands of miles to reach us only to be buried in landfill. A banana might travel from the other side of the world and because it’s not quite the right shape or the skin is blemished it will be contributing to global warming.
So, we’re on a mission this year to eat that banana before it goes brown, the broccoli before it grows little yellow flowers, to only put on our plates what we can eat and to only buy what we need, if something comes as a BOGOF and we know we won’t be able to eat it for whatever reason then we’re going to leave it on the shelf.
It’s only a few small things but at least here at Freshbinz Ltd we can feel we’re doing our bit.