by Gethin Russell-Jones
There’s very little waste in the Bible. Adam and Eve weren’t required to drag their wheelie bins through Eden and there’s no record of Noah discarding snack wrappings onto the surface of the deep. Joseph’s weird dream of 14 cattle sees the seven lean cows eat the seven corpulent; yet again no sacks of bulging bony garbage.
Moving swiftly to the New Testament and Jesus turns out to be very shrewd when it comes to matters of waste and taste. Water is turned to wine; fish and loaves are multiplied to feed five thousand people and once more there’s no litter. Jesus commands his disciples to collect all the scraps so there should be no waste: ‘When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of barley loaves left over by those that had eaten.’ 1
Fast-forward a couple of millennia and land your time travel craft in Trafalgar Square, London on December 16, 2009. This was the scene of one of the largest free food events seen in recent British history. This too was called Feeding the Five Thousand. Visitors to the world famous landmark were treated to a free lunch, pudding and refreshments. They could even take provisions away with them. All free and tasty, and no one fell prey to food poisoning.
The free lunch was made with food that would otherwise have gone to waste, like wonky carrots and other outgraded fruit and vegetables, which were made into delicious curry and served with surplus bread. Smoothies and cake were also on offer, as well as bags of fruit and vegetables for people to take home and cook themselves. Incredibly the smoothies were produced by energetic volunteers taking turns on a static bicycle that powered the process.
The event’s raison d’être, however, was not pious. Sure, thousands of people were fed and enjoyed the gathering’s unique culinary and cultural flavours. But the point of the exercise was to highlight the profligate amounts of food thrown away by businesses and homes in the UK every year. Sadly, waste is here to stay and probably for a very long time.
We are officially a nation of wasters as evidenced by the amount of food we bin every year. Anti-waste organisation Wrap2 now estimates that the average UK household wastes £480 of food every year.
The same organisation suggests that 8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away each year, enough to fill 4,700 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Here are a few more facts about the food we dispatch to the rubbish dump:
Tristram Stuart is the UK’s most prominent campaigner on food waste and was the inspiration for the Feeding the Five Thousand event. Stuart is passionate about his subject and has given rise to ‘Freeganism’, the practice of eating only food that has been thrown away by producers and retailers. He has cultivated a lifestyle of eating produce discarded by supermarkets and has mastered the art of raiding the bins of the UK’s leading food sellers. His book Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal is becoming a Bible to all aspiring freegans, indeed to anyone interested in the issue of food waste.
In his book he describes a wedding reception to which he was invited: ‘One summer, my wife’s cousin asked us to make mango lassi for their wedding, and by luck, on a Sunday at Spitalfields, I stumbled upon a stack of 25 box loads of the ripest, loveliest organic mangoes I had ever seen in Britain. Twenty-four hours more in store and they would have been past it, but on that day they were at the height of perfection. We peeled and stoned them all, put the pulp in bags and froze it. Just before the wedding we churned the pulp up with milk and yoghurt and added a sprig of mint to each serving. The result was sensational.’
Stuart argues that the culture of waste has permeated the entire food chain. Farmers and other producers produce too great a surplus (there are three times as many cows as humans on the planet at present); supermarkets throw away perfectly good food and consumers buy far more than they can possibly eat or drink. The result is a waste crisis that is squeezing both the environment and society.
Precious land is being turned into landfill in order to accommodate the appalling food mountain now dominating the UK. This gigantic purée then releases gases that are released into the atmosphere thus increasing the amount of carbon, making the plant as warm as toast. All in all it’s a ‘lose-lose’ situation.
On a global level, more and more ancient woodland is being deforested by the needs of agriculture. Stuart reckons that 80% of the world’s most endangered bird and animal species live in such environments. Waste is destroying the planet.
Then there’s the human cost. Not only in terms of squandered money but in its impact on the poorest of society. This brings us back to the supermarkets. Instead of redistributing ‘old’ food to charities that work with the poor, most of these companies bin unwanted food without giving it away to feed society’s most needy. Supermarkets routinely stock their stores with food they know they cannot sell on the basis that their customers like to see stores that are well supplied. And apart from Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, the other supermarkets have a lamentable track record in enabling their good quality surplus to benefit those in most need.
FareShare3 is the UK’s leading food redistribution charity, making quality surplus food available to the nation’s most disadvantaged. According to the organization, an average of 29,000 people benefit from the service FareShare provides every day. This redistribution of food also has significant environmental benefits – less surplus food is sent to landfill and it helped businesses reduce CO2 emissions by 13,950 tonnes in 2008/09.4
Faced with this environmental and social blemish, what can we do? Well, quite a bit. If you’re conservative in your habits (and most of us are) then plan your meals, use a shopping list and buy less food. You could save a staggering £480 pounds a year and save the planet at the same time.
If you’re of a more adventurous disposition, then look to Mark Boyle. For the past year Mark hasn’t spent anything on food. Yes that’s right, zero. Home is a caravan near Bath and he grows his vegetables and makes his own nettle tea. Other food is solicited from local stores and restaurants who he claims are only too happy to give him food that’s passed its sell-by date.
So the motto is very simple. ‘Waste not, want not.’ Your wallet will feel heavier and the planet might breathe a little easier too.
1. John 6:12–13
2. Waste And Resources Action Programme (WRAP), www.wrap.org.uk. The Old Academy, 21 Horse Fair, Banbury, Oxon OX16 0AH.
3. Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal by Tristram Stuart. Published July 2009 by Penguin, ISBN 978 0 1410 3634 2.
4. www.fareshare.org.uk Reg. charity no 1100051. Unit H04, Tower Bridge Business Complex, 100 Clements Road, Bermondsey, London SE16 4DG. Tel: 020 7394 2468
4. Source of data: www.fareshare.org.uk