The huge cost of food waste

An app will deliver budget-priced food parcels to your door in a bid to address the growing problem of food waste. Too Good To Go's "Parcels" service will include unused items from household-name brands to "help food producers manage surplus goods more effectively", said New Food.

The move to reduce waste at the "manufacturing stage" represents a "significant expansion" of the company's existing business model of selling excess food directly to consumers, and another avenue to tackle the "pressing issue" of food waste.

How bad is the food waste problem?

The level of food waste in the UK "isn't just a moral failure – it's an environmental catastrophe", said Charlotte Hill, CEO of food redistribution charity the Felix Project, in The Independent.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The UK throws away an estimated 10.7 million tonnes of food each year, which is "enough to fill Wembley Stadium ten times", all while 11 million people in the UK, including three million children, are food insecure.

What makes this "truly enraging" is that around 40% of the waste is "perfectly rescuable" because it's not just "leftovers from households", but also edible food from farms, supermarkets and food suppliers. The "absurdity" of this is "staggering", Hill said. A 2022 report from the World Wide Fund for Nature found that around three million tonnes of edible food is lost before it even leaves UK farms.

Meanwhile, said Convenience Store, campaigners have found that although retailers are becoming more aware of food waste, only around a third of businesses believe they are managing it effectively.

How does that compare to other developed countries?

In Germany, a 2020 government study found that 11 million tonnes of food waste is generated every year, a similar figure to the UK, but the United States "discards more food than any other country in the world", said RTS – around 54 million tonnes every year.

Globally, said the United Nations, around 13.2% of food produced is "lost between harvest and retail", while an estimated 19% of total global food production is "wasted in households, in the food service and in retail".

What can be done?

Food redistribution charities have urged the UK government to commit to stopping food waste by unfreezing the Farm Gate Waste Fund. The £15 million fund could cover the cost for farmers to "harvest, pack, store and deliver surplus food to charities", said Food Manufacture.

More broadly, addressing food waste "requires action on both an individual and a systemic level", said Sami Dimassi, of the UN Environment Programme, in Arab News. "We must reimagine sustainable food systems that ensure the production and consumption of sufficient, affordable, and nutritious food", while "conserving the natural resources and ecosystems on which food systems depend".

What can individuals do?

Tackling food waste can "sound daunting" for the individual, said Food Cycle. But the steps we can take include only buying and cooking what we need, getting "creative" with leftovers rather than throwing them away, and organising food properly at home by logging and storing it mindfully. If you're looking to go a step further, consider volunteering for or donating to food redistribution charities.

Denmark reduced its food waste by 25% between 2010 and 2015, the "cumulative result of many small changes" led by "one woman and social media", said The Guardian. Selina Juul was "appalled" to discover how much food was going to waste in her country and started a Facebook group. It proved such a success that REMA 1000, the biggest discount chain in Denmark, asked her to help reduce its waste.

Outlets ended bulk discounts like "buy two, get one free" and started selling bananas individually, going from 80 to 100 bananas being wasted every day, to only around 10. REMA 1000 also started to use two layers of packaging to extend the shelf life of its cold meats. Although extra packaging has an environmental impact, removing packaging that is "purely cosmetic and egregious" can help offset that.