We’ve seen a lot of bad news lately about how much food we in the western world waste. It’s just crazy. But, now, British Environment Secretary Michael Gove has announced a new plan to recycle food that would otherwise be trashed into solid, healthy meals for those in need…
UK Anti-Food Waste campaigner businessman Bill Elliot calls the amount
of food being wasted each year ‘a scandal’.
Not just a few meals, either! Gove says his plan should yield as many as 250 million meals a year, just making use of food that major supermarket chains would otherwise throw out. A new cooperative program involving retailers, the government and charities (which will receive the meals) will cost about £15 million a year, but will save an estimated £1 billion worth of food from the landfill. Recipients will include school breakfast programmes, seniors’ homes, disabled groups and the homeless.
“Nobody wants to see good food go to waste. It harms our environment, it’s bad for business – and it’s morally indefensible. Every year, around 100,000 tonnes of readily available and perfectly edible food is never eaten. This has got to change.” Gove told the Daily Mail newspaper.
What they’re going to do…
Last year a UK ‘food rescue’ group called FareShare distributed more than 28.6 million meals made from recycled food. The program focuses on saving Fresh Produce, Bread and Meat. Those key ingredients are distributed directly to users so they can fold them into their menu plans in the most effective ways possible. Using the FareShare model, Gove wants to take the program national.
Well known UK Anti-Food Waste campaigner businessman Bill Elliot calls the amount of food being wasted each year ‘a scandal’. He told the Daily Mail: “We all know that food is often perfectly good long after the best before date set by the supermarket. It is a scandal that so much is thrown away. It is indefensible that you can have a homeless person sat [sic] just a few yards away while sacks of food are taken away to be dumped. There are already lots of people getting involved in trying to make sure this food gets to where it is needed, but this [new] initiative can make a real difference in setting up a proper infrastructure.”
Currently, almost a third of all food produced around the world is thrown away, for one reason or another. In the UK alone, that’s more than 10 million tonnes of food each year.
My take…
Hurrah for this great national initiative by the UK! Let’s hope the supermarkets choose to cooperate. They’re the key front-end players in the game and their participation is crucial to the plan’s success. I hope the retailers look upon any costs associated the new plan as an investment in good corporate citizenship, rather than a drag on profits. After all, they’re just like any other business – profit is their primary goal.
Another potential drawback could be the relatively small capacity of many charitable groups to deal with, process and distribute recycled food. Given a sudden, major influx of raw material, will food banks, school lunch programmes and shelters have the resources to make the most of it? What about bulk refrigeration? What about cooking facilities? One of the most important of those resources will be volunteer help, and an emphasis will be placed on recruiting volunteers from the ranks of the foodservice professionals, who know how to safely handle food and – not the least concern – how to cook!
One bottleneck in the system could turn out to be transportation: The ‘rescued’ food has to be picked up from the supermarkets by someone with a big truck, taken to the sporting facility, and then taken from there to the end users. This will be something that programme coordinators will want to look at well before they start operations of the system Gove envisions. Transportation could turn out to be one of the biggest operating costs of the programme. Will it be prohibitive? Or will corporate partners ‘volunteer’ vehicles and fuel for the effort?
There are other challenges, I’m sure, which will have to be met before the UK-wide food recycling programme can be implemented. Let’s help they can all be successfully addressed.
~ Maggie J.