January 2017
Featured in this insight: Consumer goods & FMCG , Financial services, Food & drink
£13bn worth of food wasted annually, figures reveal: According to new figures, British consumers throw away £13 billion worth of edible food from homes every year.
Two years ago, in 2015, the waste and recycling experts, Wrap, discovered that the average British residency wasted £470 worth of edible food that year.
Wrap suggested that this food wastage, which could have been avoided, generated 19 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. If that greenhouse gas generation had been avoided, it would be equivalent to reducing the number of cars on the road by 25 per cent.
The latest released figures reveal that in the last few years, efforts to try and reduce food waste have slowed down, with 7.3 million tonnes of food thrown away in 2015, in comparison to 7 million tonnes in 2012. Of the food thrown away in 2015, 4.4 million tonnes could have been avoided and had been edible before it was wasted. Similarly, 4.3 million tonnes of food thrown away in 2012 could have been avoided. This marks the first time that food waste levels have grown since Wrap conducted their very first survey in 2007.
According to Wrap, the slowdown in efforts to decrease food waste can be attributed to the fall in food prices and the increase in incomes, which have in turn lessened the necessity for people to curb their food waste.
In the years between 2007 and 2012, the amount of residential food wastage decreased by 15 per cent and the amount of avoidable food waste fell by 21 per cent as a result of increasing food prices, changes to food and labelling to simplify use by date advice, as well as a rise in awareness of food waste.
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