We have discussed The Other White House’s habit of weighing its food waste (yes, we are that weird) before. Now, with a year of data in the bag, we thought you might like an update.
WRAP recently re-stated the UK household food waste figures for 2015, bringing them in line with the Food Loss and Waste Standard – the international norm – for better consistency in measuring, reporting and acting on food waste.
The two biggest changes are: no longer classifying food waste to one of three categories (avoidable, possibly avoidable and unavoidable) but using simply ‘edible parts or ‘inedible parts’; and not counting as food waste the 200,000 tonnes that gets fed to animals.
What this does to the overall numbers is that 7.3 million tonnes of food wasted from our homes in the UK every year becomes 7.1 million tonnes and 4.4 million tonnes of avoidable household food waste becomes 5 million tonnes of edible parts. The cost of edible parts ending up in the bin rises from £13 billion to £15 billion. Or 108kg per person per year at a cost of £810 for a family …
Fifty-two weeks of numbers generated from weighing The Other White House’s food waste caddy ahead of putting it out for collection have revealed the following:
- Just shy of 33kg of food waste went into our caddy between May 17 and June 18
- We averaged 634g of food waste per week – 13% that of a typical UK household
And, if we still have our sums correct, extrapolated to UK households this amount of food waste would equate to less than 950,000 tonnes a year.
Interestingly, we wasted more on average per week in the first half of the experiment (770g) than the second (498g). Did we become more aware of the amount we were wasting and make a conscious (or unconscious) effort to reduce it? A 35% reduction in UK household food waste would equate to about 2.5 million tonnes …
Last time we blogged about this we speculated on five factors: growing our own, keeping hens, home composting, a vegetarian diet and kitchen skills/cooking confidence.
We should probably add another: our council still provides a separate weekly collection of food waste – and we are lucky to have it (especially as Northamptonshire County Council was the first for 20 years to issue a Section 114 notice, effectively admitting it had gone bust, earlier this year).
It is estimated that around 50% of authorities in England collect food waste; either separately or mixed with garden waste. There are currently no legal requirements for separate food waste collections in England, and both Barnet and Wolverhampton Councils have recently announced the cessation of collecting food waste separately to save on costs.
In Wales, there are mandatory local authority targets for recycling, re-using and composting household waste (including food waste) and 99% of households were provided with separate food waste collection services in 2015.
Between 2012 and 2015 there was no meaningful change in estimated levels of HHFW in the UK. However, one country did see a reduction: Wales, with the evidence suggesting levels of HHFW in Wales are now lower than the rest of the UK by around 9 per cent …
Could it be that seeing is believing?