Food. It’s
wonderful. We all enjoy it. But we waste a lot of it. In the US and the UK, food
that could be used to fill bellies is instead filling landfills.
This has
huge environmental repercussions. Food waste in landfills produces methane, a
greenhouse gas more powerful than CO2. There are many other indirect effects that hurt the environment, like water waste and oil used to produce products, so it’s obvious
that food waste is a harmful force.
When we look
at the numbers, the US wastes 40 percent of purchased food while the UK wastes
only 30.8 percent. The differences in numbers comes in part from a UK food
waste campaign that started back in 2007 called Love Food Hate Waste.
The campaign
has been powerful, saving 5 million tons of CO2 since 2007 according to the
organization (that’s the equivalent of taking 2.2 million cars off the road).
A more recent
change to reduce food waste was at one of the UK’s largest grocery chains,
Tesco. The company found that consumers were confused by the ‘best before’
dates on produce, throwing away food before it was expired because of these
labels.
In response
to this, the company has removed that label on many fruits and vegetables. Small
actions like this have a big impact when it comes to food waste.
Maybe by copying
some of what the UK has done, the US can reduce its food waste as well.
I can certainly identify with those customers who were confused about the 'best before' dates! I personally think it can be a little unclear how they refer to quality as opposed to safety. I think it was a great idea for Tesco to remove those labels on their produce.
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