Solutions.

Reducing food waste is possible. We can see this from all the recent improvements that have bloomed from the increasing awareness of the issue. However, the greatest challenge is that behaviour change is so difficult. People in general find it hard to change behaviour when there isn’t the suitable motivation. For people such as myself, my reality is that I have seemingly limitless supplies of food (countless choices of cheap, accessible and dispensable food), and no directly visible consequences whenever I waste any of it.

So, what could be done to change the way we value our food and stimulate behaviour change…

·         Connect food items to their environmental consequences by using eco-labelling.

·         Create a financial incentive to choose more environmentally-friendly products with carbon taxes.

The indirect environmental consequences of food items need to become visible. Eco-labelling of products is a simple way to increase awareness of what sort of food items are better or worse for the planet. The impact of eco-labelling on consumer choice has been seen in the success of MSC and FSC sustainability labels. There needs to be a standardised and reliable way to evaluate the carbon footprint (or an equivalent measure) of food items, and this could be communicated to the public in a similar way to food nutrition labels. This will allow consumers to easily choose to buy products that are grown more efficiently to use less resources and produce less carbon.

This action would provide the means for consumers to consider the environmental costs of their food shopping. It would perhaps help people to value their food more, and appreciate the non-financial costs of their purchases. This would hopefully motivate people to reduce their food waste. However, the labelling would only be read by people who are concerned with environmental issues.

To motivate all people to buy food, or avoid waste of food in relation to its environmental impacts, more incentive would be required. This could occur in the form of a ‘carbon tax’ on all food products over a certain threshold to produce.

This obviously would have to be applied on a large-scale which would require huge work and cooperation with all stakeholders: consumers, food retailers and wholesalers, suppliers, farmers, processing and manufacturing companies, policy makers, scientists etc. However, it is not impossible, and is a potential solution to reducing food waste and mitigating the impact of consumer pressures on agricultural stress.

The importance of combating food waste for the planet

It’s hard to associate throwing your sandwich crusts in the bin with the loss of wildlife. What has stale bread got to do with woodland birds? Or how does peanut butter impact the primates?

Well, the connection is never simple or direct. But essentially, the strain that agriculture is putting on our planet is perhaps the primary stimulation for the habitat loss which endangers all biodiversity. The change of natural ecosystems into farmland or pasture land has for thousands of years chipped away at the homes of native species.

Agriculture creates countless potential issues, for example:

• Over-use of fertilisers

o   Excess fertiliser forms greenhouse gases

o   Leaching and resulting eutrophication of waterways

o   Energy requirements of fertiliser production

• Pesticide and herbicide use

o   Dangers of resistance (superweeds!)

o   Possible human health impacts

o   Killing non-target organisms

• Inefficient use of freshwater

o   Increasing soil salinity

o   Using up vast amounts of limited freshwater

• Land-use conversion

o   Habitat loss

o   Habitat fragmentation

o   Habitation degradation (edge effect, disturbance, reduced permeability)

o   Reduction of carbon sinks

• Greenhouse gas sources

o   Livestock emissions (burping cows!)

o   Paddy rice fields methane emissions

o   Manure emissions

o   Synthetic fertiliser emissions

o   Burning emissions

o   Climate change

• Soil erosion

o   Topsoil loss

o   Clogged waterways

o   Increase in flooding

o   Land degradation

• Loss of genetic diversity

o   Vulnerable monocultures

o   Reduced habitat niches for wildlife

• Resource use

o   Fuel for machinery production and use

o   Fuel for processing and distribution

o   Freshwater

At a global scale, these issues snowball through consequence after consequence. The accumulative damage done are significantly contributing to our actions passing environmental ‘planetary boundaries’.

In light of this, it is surely ludicrous to waste the food that causes so much damage to produce! We ought to be making the most of food yields, and minimise unnecessary and detrimental surplus.

A paper written by Foley et al. (2011) named “Solutions for a Cultivated Planet” suggests that we live on a planet now environmentally defined by our agricultural practices. To sustainably continue to feed our (growing) human population, without destroying the planet, the paper suggests four key changes:

1. Close the yield gap
2. Increase cropping efficiency
3. Change diets
4. Reduce food waste

This last point may have extra caught your attention (either that or you are perhaps visiting the wrong blog). Reducing food waste is recognised as important, and possibly vital to achieving global food security.

Policy, economics, behaviour change and technology will all have a large part to play in achieving such a goal. However, the role of people just like you and me is of great importance. It is us who are being fed and creating the agricultural demand. Don’t dismiss your small actions at reducing food waste as too small to make a difference. It is such an important topic; every bit of help is important! So even if some endangered species doesn’t march into your kitchen to say thanks when you freeze leftovers or leave the skin on your potatoes, be proud of the difference you are making, however small it may be.

 

References:

• http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/full/nature10452.html
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/fertilized-world/charles-text
• http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/impacts/
• http://psep.cce.cornell.edu/facts-slides-self/facts/mod-ag-grw85.aspx
• http://www.nature.com/articles/461472a.epdf?referrer_access_token=1UE40LXBCXzp6cD4Zx0zJtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0P37Gs3zKRDU9gfE3JMDFVz7xzwh0QiMMAsPzdkipEmgINJpfmFK314LZrZYAGDDCaj060w3ffTNkZ59XzUjgXcGKF3ZH2-sKor2pQ4-lKpFiiHaR5LE5oXo6vlMVl7CvvkZPs0AcSY8qVI7XEcQ7uh9rFbhZVyV8UINAiJpO_bWC_hUSewyzri21b8L4A4NaU%3D&tracking_referrer
• http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/issue/index.html

 

SUPERmarkets

A taste of what are our supermarkets doing to reduce their food waste…

Tesco:

·         Food surplus donations with FareShare to distribution centres

·         Food surplus programmes in 400 stores across central Europe

·         Currently trialling a surplus distribution programme in Malaysia

·         Food waste hotline to tackle the supply chain

·         Bakery goods that can’t be donated go do animal feed

·         Fats and oils converted to bio-diesel

·         Recover energy from food waste (anaerobic digestion or incineration)

·         Advanced forecasting and ordering

·         Selling cheaper, larger quantities when a bumper crop occurs

·         Funding agricultural investigations into food waste

·         Reducing trimming in the processing

·         Perfectly Imperfect range of wonky fruit and vegetables

·         Help FareShare in redistributing directly from farmers

ASDA:

·         Work with FareShare to redistribute surplus foods

·         Beautiful on the Inside range of wonky fruit and vegetables

·         Reviewing best before dates from shortened supply chains

·         Dedicated food waste conference held for suppliers

·         Courtauld Commitment

·         Improvements to packaging

·         Order according to weather which changes consumer purchases

Morrisons:

·         Buying whole animals from farmers to be responsible for all by-products

·         ‘Just in time’ deliveries for fresher stock

·         Portion sizes flexibility at the Market Street counters

·         Collaboration with Love Food Hate Waste to aid consumers

·         FoodCycle programme weekly collections

·         Community shop welfare support of heavily discounted food

·         Discounted company shop of damaged or imperfect produce

·         Fareshare and His Church used for redistribution of surplus food

·         Let’s Grow educational programme to teach children about fresh food

·         The School Food Plan to guide school food services

·         Food banks for 132 charities for people in need (2014/15)

·         Selling out-graded fruit to third party suppliers

Sainsbury’s:

·         Waste Less, Save More programme

·         Cannock store is off the National Grid and powered by food waste alone

·         Donate surplus food to local charities

·         Donations of surplus food to FareShare and Betel of Britain for redistribution

·         Convert all unsold bread into animal feed

·         Pumpkin recycling scheme after Halloween

 

References:

·         https://www.tescoplc.com/tesco-and-society/food-waste/tackling-food-waste-in-our-operations/

·         https://sustainability.asda.com/food-waste

·         https://www.morrisons-corporate.com/Global/corporate/Morrisons_CR2015_Interactive_20150609.pdf

·         http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/responsibility/our-commitments/operational-waste/

·          

 

My Zero Waste, One Shop Week Meal Plan

Meal planning may be the key in my home to reducing food waste. It is rare that we have time to sit and decide on what we all want to eat over the next week. It tends to be more of a daily decision, and most days we must by-pass the shops on our way home from somewhere to complete the list of ingredients that we need that evening.

My whole family are foodies, and get a bit over-excited when we see a bargain deal on something delicious in the shops. We stock up our fridge with things that we like the look of, and then try to work around that. However, this bad planning often leads to clashing use-by dates, and random food items that don’t go with anything else and so get forgotten.

I decided to set an experimental week with two rules:

1.       I could only do one big food shop to get that week’s ingredients.

2.       No avoidable food waste was allowed of any of the food that I bought.

At the end of the week, the only things in the food waste bin were egg shells, the tops of carrots, the pepper stalks and seeds, chicken bones, teabags and a spoonful of risotto that fell on the floor (whoops).

Not only did I successfully cut my food waste, but there were additional benefits in that the plan made my week easier. No extra trips to the shops and no deliberating over meal options.

The only issue is the lack of flexibility. If extra people had come over for dinner, or if someone REALLY didn’t want the planned meal, then cooking something else would have thrown the whole timetable out of sync.

With a little think at the start of the week and one Sunday morning trip to Tesco with my strict shopping list, I managed to have a zero food waste week!!

References:

·         http://www.zerowasteweek.co.uk/menu-plan-reducing-food-waste/

·         http://www.thekitchn.com/a-week-of-budget-meals-with-cathy-erway-217118

·         https://lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes

·         https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/leftovers

·         https://realfood.tesco.com/meal-planner/leftover-tool.html

 

Are our efforts working?

Only this week it was announced that the Sainsbury’s Waste Less, Save More programme has backed down in the food waste fight¹. The innovative scheme began in 2016, funded by a £1 million investment to tackle household food waste. Efforts were focused in an experimental trial-run in the Derbyshire town of Swadlincote, with the hope to expand success nationwide.

More than just awareness and education, the campaign trialled set projects:

·         Smart Planner app: for planning meals and shopping lists

·         Nectar Incentives: getting points as rewards for donating to the food sharing scheme

·         Food Rescue: online tool for using up leftover ingredients

·         Zero Waste Kitchen: challenge for families to reduce food waste with new kitchen tools

·         Food Saver Champions: faces of the campaign, to prompt and advise

·         Feed the 1000: event providing 1000 portions of food from normally thrown items

·         Fab Food: scheme to educate children about food waste

·         Bosch Smart Fridges: cameras in the fridges to check what you already have

·         Leftover Stickers: help people use up leftovers

·         Fridge Thermometers: improve food storage

·         Winnow App: trialled by six families to identify food waste patterns and waste costs²

Despite the success of events, and evidence of reduced food waste in many households, along with better awareness and education, the result was far from its target. At the start of the project, the programme hoped to cut the average £700 of food waste per family by 50%. However, this has been unfortunately abandoned.

This is perhaps sensible. The large budget implemented some brilliant new schemes, but as none of them have made significant differences, this sort of money could be better spent tackling an easier aspect of the food waste problem, perhaps supermarket cosmetic standards, or unnecessary distribution distances. It isn’t that the household changes suggested were difficult! It is that behavioural change is a long-term process.

Waste Less, Save More has taught us that tackling food waste is far more complex than expected, and the results of the trial will be analysed and feed into later schemes. It has been a positive but small step on a long journey of change.

 

References:

1.       https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/08/sainsburys-scheme-household-food-waste

2.       https://wastelesssavemore.sainsburys.co.uk/

 

Welcome to OLIO

Food distribution with the food sharing app, for everybody.

If you haven’t heard about the food sharing revolution, then now’s the time to find out more!

It is a business that promotes people to share their surplus food, giving it to people who are in need of the items. It is targeted at all the public as a general audience, with an app that makes it incredibly easy and accessible as a means to find and contact someone either needing food or needing rid of food.

 

It has really taken off in America in localised areas, especially cities. However, it is slow growing in the UK at present. The more people who sign up, the more the system can get underway. For this reason, I consider awareness and enthusiasm to be the best current tools for helping OLIO and similar programmes to grow.

Go and have a look for yourself…. And download the app!

https://olioex.com/

Pointing the blame

I wanted to respond to a couple of articles that have come out recently, considering social trends to blame for food waste, and pointing fingers in the direction of iPhone-hooked amateur food-photographers². A national study from Sainsbury’s investigated food waste patterns, and discovered a generation gap in food waste attitudes and habits³. It has been suggested that food blogging, especially that which turns meals into something of an art form, inspires people to try recipes with unusual ingredients that they will never fully use up⁴.

Now, I don’t use Instagram myself, but very few of my friends join me in that regard. When I meet up in a coffee shop or restaurant with someone, there is often the awkward pause while I twiddle my thumbs and wait for them to capture the moment of our reunion through a photo of a lopsided brownie slice, or the foamy swirls on the tops of our lattes. In my experience, this isn’t ever to the detriment of their appetite. However, if you do indulge in ten minutes of Instagram searching, then you will be blown away by photo after photo displaying indulgence, colour, creativity and drooling (on your part)⁵. It is very obvious that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who prioritise photographing their plateful of food looking as beautiful as possible, over eating it while it is still hot and fresh. Perhaps this is changing how technology-users value their food. If so, then we need to help re-shift the priority of food image below factors such as nutrition, price, and environmental impacts of production.

A key finding of the study was that younger consumers don’t plan meals before visiting the supermarket. 20% of people aged under 35 admitted to wasting most of the food they buy from a big shopping trip, as opposed to just 8% of people aged over 55³. Perhaps if the Instagram-inspired do go on an ingredients-shopping spree, then it needs factoring into week-long food requirements. I am not saying that the next time you see a spiced doughnut recipe, that you must research 20 other recipes to use up the rest of the cinnamon. However, I do think that many of us are guilty of buying fresh products that will soon go off, and don’t make any special effort to use it all up after purchase, to freeze it until needed again, or to change to using a replacement ingredient from our store cupboards. I personally don’t blame Instagram, but I do think that Instagram demonstrates the huge variety and choice we have these days in our kitchens and supermarkets. It is this overwhelming (and exciting) variety and choice that allows us to so easily become short-sighted when we make consumer decisions. There is a definite need for us to do as most of our grandparents did, and to pre-organise and plan our big food shops so as to not over-buy our requirements.

Another way in which we could do with taking a leaf out of my grandmother’s book, is culinary know-how, and how it can help us to use up leftovers. Reportedly, over 55s are the most comfortable in the kitchen³, however that perhaps is time and experience rather than generation differences in attitudes. The great bank of food inspiration to be found in social media can be used to educate and inspire young people to get interested and creative with cooking⁵. At their fingertips are thousands of suggestions as to how to prepare or cook a single ingredient, what varieties of it exist, the health benefits, the carbon footprint etc. The so dubbed “millennials” generation compared to their elders, have the potential to be as food-savvy and thrifty with food, more conscious of their consumer impacts and more inventive with the ever-increasing options and variety available. An example project which is helping to project this mindset is Sainsbury’s Waste Less, Save More scheme⁷.

Yes, the younger generations are guilty of wasting more food in general than their parents, but the idea that Instagram is to blame is almost irrelevant in comparison to the greater impacts and leaks in our food production and supply systems. Perhaps social media enabling an increase in awareness, and the resulting banks of food photography will become a tool for food waste mitigation.

References:

1. My Domain (2016) 7 Tips for Taking Delicious Instagram Food Pics. Available from: http://www.mydomaine.com/instagram-food-photo-tips [Accessed17 February].
2. Esquire (2017) Instagrammers Are Driving Britain’s Food Waste Problem, Says Study. Available from: http://www.esquire.co.uk/food-drink/news/a13046/millennials-are-driving-britains-food-waste-problem-says-study/ [Accessed 17 February 2017].
3. The Guardian (2017a) Instagram generation is fuelling UK food waste mountain, study finds. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/10/instagram-generation-fuelling-uk-food-waste-mountain-study-sainsburys [Accessed 17 February 2017].
4. BBC Newsbeat (2017) Are food Instagrammers really to blame for food waste? Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38931260/are-food-instagrammers-really-to-blame-for-food-waste [Accessed 17 February 2017].
5. Instagram (2017) love_food. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/love_food/ [Accessed 17 February 2017].
6. The Guardian (2017b) Food waste is a scandal, but to blame it on millennials is nonsense. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/13/food-waste-millennials-instagram-postwar-intensive-farming?CMP=share_btn_tw [Accessed 17 February 2017].
7. Sainsbury’s (2017) Waste Less Save More. Available from: https://wastelesssavemore.sainsburys.co.uk/ [Accessed 17 February 2017].

 

 

 

 

Communicating with the public

Science communication is receiving more acclaim recently, as its research is helping scientists to make their work and discoveries both relevant and available to wider audiences. In a technological world of overwhelming available information sources, what needs to be heard will often have to fight to the limelight behind the stories that people want to hear. Science must be made aware of, but in ways that are understandable and noteworthy. Only then will it receive the attention it is due. In the world of conservation, it can be hard to make people care about an ugly little bug, another Latin-named sub-species, an angry snake, or some uncharismatic animal from far away. For years, often unconsciously, conservation organisations have driven awareness campaigns using key tools that are used throughout all forms of media. To connect with their audience, they use flagship species, individual stories, and human impacts to focus on. For food waste, communication techniques and methods suggest that it is a topic that has great potential in bringing on board public support. There are some key criteria that have their boxes ticked…

• Make it relevant: we all eat and enjoy food. To address the issues with items we see almost every day makes us care about the facts and figures all the more. For instance, statistics on the number of loaves of bread thrown away will surely frighten the millions of sandwich-lovers?
• Use empathy: unfortunately, we aren’t all Miranda Hart, and we don’t give fruit and vegetables names or identities. We feel for humans more than we do for any item. Food waste through uneven distribution is an avoidable cause of huge hunger and starvation across the world. If people understand that their wasteful habits are a drain on food resources to the detriment of those in poverty, they may think twice about over-buying and throwing just because they can.
• Storytelling: we are a storytelling race, with tales of overcoming strife embedded in all our cultures. The issue of food waste provides this story. It starts with an idyllic idea of a global population all fed and well. The story’s vital ‘conflict’ is that of food waste, the villainous characters being faceless organisations that financially drive our unsustainable food systems. The solution to bring about a happy ending? Well, that is a work in progress! But food distribution organisations, campaigns, policy change, supermarkets, awareness in the public, these solutions are waiting and ready to go.

I’m not saying that food waste is automatically solvable because it is easier to communicate than the more incomprehensible topics to be found in the world of science. But communications play a big role in any attempts at stimulating change, and food waste issues need to be laid at the door of the public in a way that makes them care. If you scroll through a YouTube search for food waste, you will find many talks and animated infographics full of the statistics available. When this media makes people reflect on their own behaviours and opinions, then the communication begins to pay off. Go on, let yourself be communicated with!

A second Christmas

Well apparently, it is already February?! But in the dark world of my kitchen cupboards it still looks like mid-December. Packs of mini shortbreads, spicy coated peanuts, an unwanted but discounted Christmas pudding and the remains of the Jaffa-Cake gift box have remained miraculously unscavenged over the last few weeks. And so, despite Christmas being well over, there is seasonal food remaining that most people would turn their nose up at now that the Easter Bunny is closer than Santa is.

As I have taken up the challenge of minimising my household food waste as much as possible, I am faced with the challenge of getting inventive with these ingredients. And my first offering of Christmas-Food-Recycling comes in the form of a Panettone pudding.

These great hunks of airy, sweet bread are all the rage at Christmas. It was first introduced to my family by some Italian friends who squished one of many into their suitcase after a holiday back home a few years back. To the Italians, it is a staple sweet treat for festivities, so I hear¹. However, clearly there isn’t enough Italian blood in my ancestry, because two small loaves escaped being eaten before now, having sat forgotten on a top shelf in their sparkly packaging.

To pretend it is Christmas all over again however is just a bit sad without the tree up or cheesy carols. And so I decided to re-dress my panettone in a new image (or recipe) …

Panettone Pudding:

Ingredients:

·         130ml milk

·         130ml double cream

·         1tsp vanilla extract

·         12g golden sugar

·         2 egg yolks

·         Butter (for greasing)

·         250g panettone (cut into 1 cm slices)

Method:

·         Simmer the milk, cream, vanilla and sugar

·         Beat the yolks and then slowly whisk into the warm milk mix

·         Butter an oven-proof dish and layer in panettone triangles

·         Pour over custard

·         Repeat with a second layer

·         Press gently and cover

·         Rest for 20 minutes

·         Pre-heat the oven to 200^oc

·         Put the pudding in the oven for 20 mins, until golden, bubbling and starting to crisp on top

And there you have it, voila!
I think every special occasion should now have a food recreation ceremony one month later, using up leftovers as ingredients in weird and wonderful ways.

References:

1.       http://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/panettone-legends

2.       http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate-recipes/bonkers-bread-butter-panettone-pudding-tart/

3.       http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/p/panettone_and_butter_pudding.html

4.       http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2gP7kJ8HqddSFDpgkgFb5NZ/panettone-bread-and-butter-pudding

 

 

A ‘disposable commodity’ mindset

 

Reference:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJJ1IVZE67k