As part of Food Safety Week, which runs from 4 to 10 July, Stroud District Council is encouraging businesses and consumers to reduce their food waste. Families throw away 7 million tonnes of edible food each year, at an average annual cost of £470 per household.
Councillor Simon Pickering, chair of Stroud District Council’s Environment Committee, said:
“This has a huge impact on the environment. Twenty-five percent of methane, a powerful green house, is produced from the decomposing food and vegetable matter in landfill sites. With the global population set to rise to over 9.5 billion by 2050 there are huge pressures on the world’s food production capacity.”
Wasting food has never made less sense. Research has shown that confusion over “best before” and “use by” dates and concerns about freezing and re-freezing foods (particularly meat) may be contributing to the problem.
Stroud District Council’s food safety team has produced a feature on its website with a quiz and tips for householders to get involved, including advice on:
• meal planning
• leftover recipes
• storage information
• portion advice
• labelling information
Councillor Pickering added:
“Tonnes of perfectly good fruit and vegetables are thrown away every day simply because they are the wrong shape, have surface blemishes or are out of date. So we are asking consumers not to be so picky in the hope that retailers will be persuaded to offer a greater choice of less than perfect looking fruit and veg. In November we’ll be introducing weekly food waste collections from homes in the district as part of our household recycling service. We hope it will help people think more about the amount of food they waste and also how much money they could save.”
To find out more about food safety week and food waste visit www.stroud.gov.uk/foodwasteweek2016