Feed Yourself, Not Your Bin

How much food do we throw away? Well, a quick survey in the EEE Level 5 labs shows that as students, we try to eat everything we buy in our shop. Unfortunately students only make up about 4% of the UK population, and Tesco has revealed earlier this week that it generated almost 30,000 tonnes of food waste in the first 6 month of 2013. Just to put that into perspective, that is just over 1500 new Boris buses full of passengers, each eating 2 Weetabix biscuits and drinking a litre of milk. These figures were based on information collected from the chain’s supermarkets, distribution centres, suppliers and producers. With over 3000 stores in the UK, Tesco suggested that the two highest categories are bakery and fruit and vegetables. In particular, 40% of apples and 68% of salad sold in bags was wasted. In response to this, Tesco has announced that it will end multi-buy deals on large bags of salad, removing “display until” dates from fresh fruit and vegetables, using smaller delivery cases and rearranging the bakery display to reduce the amount of bread sold in store. The UK government estimates that 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink were thrown away from homes every year, of which the majority can still be eaten. This comes to a cost of £12 billion a year for its effect to environment and wastes resources. A report released by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers have found up to 30% of the UK’s vegetable crop is never harvested purely for cosmetic reasons. These are the marketing policies many supermarkets adopt to meet consumer expectations: rejecting edible fruit and vegetables at the farm because of its physical characteristics, such as size and appearance.

How about Imperial?

There are around 22,000 students and staff at Imperial, and collectively we consume a lot of food every day, but do we eat it all? The College has been separating food waste from Taste Imperial outlets at South Kensington and composting it on site instead of sending it to landfill. Its data shows that the compost processes nearly 2 tonnes of food waste a week, which includes unsold leftovers and food left on the plate. This is quite a staggering amount, bearing in mind this does not include food binned in departments. How about in halls? Since 2008, the College has been running the Student Hall Reuse Scheme. The scheme aims to donate or recycling items left behind in halls that would otherwise be sent to landfill. In 2012, an audit was conducted in the student kitchens and it was identified that with a refinement to the system an extra £7000 of food left behind and fit for reuse, which could be donated to causes such as FoodCycle. That is another reminder of how much money we spent on food that we did not eat.

What can you do?

Remember the tips we gave you a few issues back on smart supermarket shopping. All of them will still be valid in reducing food waste - at the end of the day, buy less, waste less and save money! Writing a list and making a meal plan will help you make the most of the food you buy and not in excess if you know you will be going out with friends for the evening. If you have yet to find a food shopping buddy, then you can still make the most of the offers without wasting. Just make sure it says suitable for freezing and quite often the shelf life can be increased to around 1 month. Try to have fresh vegetables and fruit that are in season. For example, runner beans and blackberries are in their prime season now and you can introduce them to your diet and make it more interesting! Make some dessert with blackberries for your weekend treat or even have runner beans instead of chips with your burger. And if you bought too much, you can always freeze it and use it for next time! If you are passionate about the topic and want to work with the College to decrease food waste and promote sustainability, Imperial Hub and the Energy and Sustainbility Department of College will be launching this year’s StepChange campaign in a few weeks. You can now register to be a Stepchange ambassador on imperialhub.org/stepchange.