Zero Waste Week – Use it up!

Id like to invite you to play a game.

Next time you come home from the store with your food shopping, stop off at your household waste bin before you reach your house. Now open the lid and put one quarter of the food youve just bought straight in there.

If youve bought eight bags of shopping, toss two of them. If youve bought four, toss one of them you get the picture.

Shut the lid and walk away.

Crazy, right?

But that, according to research, is exactly what you, me and all our friends are doing on a daily basis. Were binning a quarter of the food we buy.

Further to that, reports show that 30-50% of food grown on this planet never reaches a human stomach!

Its harvested, stored or transported incorrectly which means it never reaches the shelves.
Its rejected for being the wrong shape, colour or size by supermarkets.

As householders, we buy too much, store it badly or cook too much.

Culture

And whats more, our Western culture encourages us to treat food like a disposable commodity rather than a valuable resource.

All the while we are throwing food away; nearly 870 million people (one in eight) in the world go to bed hungry. And its not just children in Africa that are hungry; people on your street, in your neighbourhood and at your workplace are just as likely to be living on the poverty line as anybody else.

People assume that because food waste is biodegradable its ok to landfill it. But in the absence of oxygen (which is how it tends to be in a plastic sack at the bottom of landfill), food produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

If you have food waste collections at home, thats only part of the solution. Its still EIGHT times better for the environment to eat that food than have it collected and sent for AD.

Furthermore there is the embedded energy in food that we dont often take into account such as water, transportation, cold storage and packaging.

So not only is wasting food bad for the environment, its bad for the economy, our personal finances and it has moral implications too. It is said that the amount of food wasted globally in a year could feed every man, woman and child three times over.

Solutions

Now I dont know about you, but I like to focus on the solutions, rather than the problems. It
can feel horribly overwhelming if we look at the bigger picture. Our immediate reaction is But what can *I* do? Im only one person!

If we take inspiration from Margaret Mead, she wrote Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

So her message to me is that we are all powerful. And that by taking small, seemingly insignificant actions, we have the potential to make massive positive impact.

Take steel can recycling as an example. If every person in the UK recycled just ONE more can, that would be 60 million cans saved from landfill a tiny personal step with significant collective impact.

As an opportunity to become part of the solution, I set up Zero Waste Week six years ago, the aim of which is to invite participants to reduce landfill waste.

Food waste

As I feel so strongly about food waste, this years theme is Use it up! where youre encouraged to reduce your food waste to zero for that week. Yes there might be inedible peelings, bones and cores, but apart from that, everything can be eaten if planned in advance.

The week takes place September 2-8 and you can find out more at the zero waste week website. Under the video at the top of the homepage youll see the sign up box. Once youve signed up and taken your pledge youll get daily emails during the week to help you plan, share tips and engage with our community.

If youre more of a Facebook fan, we have an events page where you can sign up and join in the conversation.

letsrecycle.com is among the media partners for Zero Waste Week in the UK.