A new campaign to reduce food waste is being launched today by WRAP (the Waste and Resources Action Programme), a Government-backed campaign that aims to get us all to reduce the amount of waste we produce.
According to WRAP's research, 6.7 million tonnes of food is thrown away every year and ends up in landfill when half of it could have been eaten. The research suggests this costs each household between £250 and £400 a year.
The Agency is trying to do its bit to reduce waste and increase recycling. In 2004 we put in place a scheme for sustainable development. For example, we're now using tap water instead of bottled water in all of our meetings. We're also looking at ways of recycling our food waste, and my colleague, David Burd, recently visited a wormery in south London where we hope to send our waste for composting.
So far we’ve been successful in increasing our recycling to between 60–65% of our waste and reducing our carbon emissions by 17%. At the moment we're the best performing Government department.
Our colleagues at DEFRA are also working hard to try to reduce waste and increase recycling across the UK. There is lots of useful information on the DEFRA website, from finding out where your waste goes, to details of European Union legislation.
These days all pre-packaged food is labelled with a 'use-by' or 'best before' date. The use-by date helps ensure food is safe to eat so foods that have passed their use by date shouldn't be eaten. However, the best before date is an indication of quality, rather than safety – so before you throw away your out-of-date produce, try to check whether the food is still edible or not.
The Agency is often asked about sustainability, particularly in connection with our advice on eating two portions of fish a week (one of which should be oily). We're keen to make sure our advice takes account of messages on other issues, such as the environment, which is why we're currently gathering data to enable us to factor sustainability into our fish advice.
In one of my previous blogs I mentioned that I was keen for industry to get involved in open debates via the blog. So let us know if any Agency legislation or any other of our activities are impacting, positively or negatively, on your ability to reduce waste and improve sustainability.