Food Waste Pics

[The Woodman]

I was through there last year on a visit to Haddon Hall and it looked charming, sunnydale.

My passenger was keen to buy a sample of the towns famous fare so I pulled up at a small shop on the left as we came back through town and he made the neccessary purchase. When we got back to Cumbria and I dropped him off at his car, he forgot to take the tart from the rear footwell. I found it the next day and put it in my freezer. I was due to meet him a month later and I gave him his tart which he'd forgotten all about!

[Blackdog]

I paid a visit to the local Lidl store near where I live recently, behind the till's on the way out of the store was a fair amount of bread and bread rolls with a notice above them "free bread". It was due to go out of date the next day.

Why can't more stores adopt this sensible approach Buer their Corporate Image!! Most people I know are sick to the back teeth of the crass attitudes and antics of these chain stores and their ilk. It's that very attitude (and other similar ones) that got us into the recession/squeeze/downturn call it what you will in the first place.

I've more than got the grumps about this - I've been out of work for three months - first time in over fifteen years as a contractor I've had more than a week without a contract...

[christina]

Disgusted, that's all I can say. A field of spinach = invite the locals down to help themselves. Potatoes dicarded by tescos = invite the locals down. Give the food to the poor on the streets or get the word out that its available. I feel the prices are high because they discard so much.

I now know what to do with our lettuce when we buy them. Poor wild rabbits in the garden won't get any left over lettuce now! Perhaps I'll save em a leaf or two.

This society has really gone crazy.

[acherontia]

Round here M&S is a dirty word with many of the local growers.
They demand ridiculously high standards and the M&S man could condemn a large consignment of (say) tomatoes and the grower was not allowed, by M&S's terms and conditions, to sell them on to others. They just got dumped to rot. Also - they would be fined by M&S. Many a grower went bust, having been lured by the original attraction of selling on to large retailer......

'Shelter' and the 'Big issue' used to collect near out of date food - don't know if they still do though. Commerce and fear of prosecutuion creates terrible waste doesn't it?

Acher

[Monkey Orchid]

Originally Posted by christina

Disgusted, that's all I can say. A field of spinach = invite the locals down to help themselves. Potatoes dicarded by tescos = invite the locals down. Give the food to the poor on the streets or get the word out that its available. I feel the prices are high because they discard so much. This society has really gone crazy.

I'm reminded of The Grapes Of Wrath, by John Steinbeck:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Car-loads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen, if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges... A million people hungry, needing the fruit - and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains... Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out... And in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.

When a few years ago I was living on minimal income and travelling around a lot, it was common knowledge amongst the communities of people I knew (homeless, travellers, environmental protesters living in camps etc) that food was available at the end of the day from the skips and dumpsters at the back of supermarkets and food shops. 'Skipping' was a way to feed yourself and your friends, whilst reducing waste: everything from fruit and veg, dairy produce, bread and cakes, even meat (if you wanted to take the risk of eating out of date meat) could be had. Then many supermarkets began deliberately spoiling their thrown-out food by pouring distatsteful or toxic chemicals over it, or fitting their foodwaste skips with padlocks. The sheer meanness of this staggered me - a kind of, "I don't want it but you can't have it" dog-in-the-manger mentality.

Even during the midst of a recession, in the UK we live in the midst of relative food abundance and excessive waste. Supermarkets sell fresh and perishable produce packaged in ridiculously large quantities, or encourage people to buy more than they need with '2 for 1' and bogof offers - why not just sell whatever it is at half price? At least if you buy fruit and veg from a market stall you can ask for as much or as little as you need. And no best before dates, either!