Wasting food: It's out of date

Cheshire West and Chester Council is promoting a national campaign by UK Charity WRAP (The Waste and Resources Action Programme) to help cut down food waste in the borough.

Each year, UK households throw away 4.5 million tonnes of food that could be eaten, with some of the most common products being milk, bread, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas and poultry. If every person stopped throwing away food for just one day in the UK, it would do the same for climate change as taking 14,000 cars off the road for a whole year.

Everything we throw away has an impact on our environment and contributes to climate change. It’s not just the food we're wasting – it’s the precious resources that go into growing our food that get wasted too. These resources can include such things as water, deforestation and the climate change that comes as a result.

As part of the campaign, WRAP is sharing some key statistics about food waste, including that 318,000 tonnes of CO2e is generated each year from the amount of bread we throw away. Binning 20 million slices a day means that 205,000 hectares of land are used unnecessarily each year to grow the crops to produce it. If we stopped wasting bread alone it would have the same impact on climate change as planting 5.3 million trees.

Habits can be hard to change but, if each of us made a small change to the way we buy and use food, eating that last slice of bread, or freezing that brown banana, we can change the amount we waste and all have a big impact, together. Each small act can add up to make a big difference.

Visit the Out of Date website to find out more about food waste and how you can make a change today to help reduce the effects of climate change.