Food Waste Pics

[Stewy]

Here's a few pics showing some of the food that is wasted, the M&S bread wastage is quite shocking.......

Why do we throw away vast amounts of food? | Environment | guardian.co.uk

[ron1863]

There was a programme on a while back about some people that buy hardly any food at all. They go around the bins of these supermarkets and take what they need. It was shocking what was being discarded and most of it was a few days before the sell by dates. I don't see why they can't vastly reduce the price for the general public.

[Dadzinsky]

Thats incredible, and so disgusting........ such a waste, and I guess goes on everyday under our noses

[Stewy]

Freegans Ron.

The freegans' creed: waste not, want not | Environment | The Observer

[Doggle Avaddit]

You don't often hear stories along the lines of:

"Tescos fined heavily and lose a shed load of customers for selling sub standard food that kills several pensioners"


Maybe this is a clue.

[Rich_]

There is a campaign going on now i believe to address the problem of "sell by" & best Before dates". I read an interesting article by clarissa Dickson Wright somewhere about it.

Sell by & best before does not mean no good after the stated date. it is there, some think, to protect the shop from the claims culture we have & also to make us buy more regularly !

[Kayleigh]

I ate some chicken yesterday 2 days out of date..
guess what I'm still here lol
Even swine flu cant wipe me out..lol..

[agrumpycow]

When I was working for a charity some years ago the local Marks and Spencer used to donate all food that was either just out of date or just about to go out of date every Saturday for us to distribute. We simply turned up at the close of shop to collect. It worked very well and was very much appreciated.
Unfortunately, due to reasons I can't exactly remember (tho I'm guessing they were along the lines of 'Health & Safety) it was stopped.
Such as scheme was ideal because shops really do throw away an amazing amount to food.

[charlieb]

Originally Posted by Rich_

to protect the shop from the claims culture we have

Sadly the shops are bowing to consumer (us!) pressure - I'm sure they would love to sell all their stock rather than dump it in the bin, but they can't for fear of being sued for food poisoning

[ron1863]

Originally Posted by Stewy

Freegans Ron.

The freegans' creed: waste not, want not | Environment | The Observer

Intersting article Stewy. Did you click through the photographic link - it's eye opening. M&S Sandwiches - require that the crust and first slice are discarded from every loaf (4 slices per loaf) leading to hundreds of thousands of discarded slices of bread daily.

Why do we throw away vast amounts of food? | Environment | guardian.co.uk

[Rich_]

They even put sell by dates on potatoes !! My parents & grand parents used to buy sacks of taties from the local farms & keep them for ages !

This is interesting....

CLARISSA DICKSON WRIGHT: These rotten food labels are well past their sell-by date | Mail Online

[sunnydale]

I don't think many of us would admit to how much food we waste every week and how many unnecessary purchases we make

How many of you have salad going limp in the fridge? Or bananas going black on the fruit bowl? (she asks, running off to have a look)

When I was married, I used to write a menu for the whole week and buy only the things I needed. Of course, I still had to get fresh milk/bread/veg etc....but the bulk of the shopping was based around the menu.

I saved around £20 a week doing it and threw very little in the bin!

Actually, I think this method came about coz I had a very tightfisted husband who watched every penny I was spending!

[The Woodman]

if you want a good read on the subject, spend a tenner on "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal" by Tristram Stuart, published by Penguin.

Apparently, the Coop is the best performing supermarket, 27% more efficient than average and Sainsbury's is the worst being 55% more wasteful than the Coop.

The Coop does not overstock it's shelves for the sake of display and has a policy of reducing the price of products near their sell by date, leading to less waste.

Many supermarkets pass on waste food to charities who donate it to the needy.

In my opinion, there is something fundamentally wrong with sending waste food to landfill.

The average UK household throws away £8 of food each week - £400 per year!

[sunnydale]

Originally Posted by The Woodman

Apparently, the Coop is the best performing supermarket,

The Coop does not overstock it's shelves for the sake of display and has a policy of reducing the price of products near their sell by date, leading to less waste.

Well the quality of 'fresh' produce in Bakewell Co op is absolutely awful, especially the salad stuff. Even items with plenty of date are going limp/yellow/off/slimy in the bags.
Every day, packets and packets of various salad leaves sit untouched on the shelves coz it's not fit to buy.
A day before the sell by date, they reduce the price. By then, it's well dead anyway! I've seen the staff collecting it in trolley loads and wheeling it away!
Co op has the monopoly in Bakewell, although there is a greengrocers (which I'm using more and more)...and it's as if they know they can get away with providing sub-standard stuff and charge top price for it
(I actually think it's the most expensive supermarket for grocery shopping full stop!)

A few weeks ago, there were 3 large polythene bags of carrots open for people to buy from and every carrot was rotten.
I've seen piles of yellow broccoli, bruised and mouldy apples, squidgy onions, mouldy grapes and strawberries.............
The list goes on.

I've no idea what other co op's are like but the one here should really get it's act together.....or come with a health warning!

Tracey (an unhappy customer!)

[The Woodman]

You've put me off Bakewell altogether now! Are you sure the yellow broccoli isn't a new variety?

I agree, it does sound awful and similar to our local Branch before they had a refit a couple of months ago. The shop has changed for the better but I guess it must be down to local management when standards drop so low.

Not being a regular shopper myself, I'm only familiar with one other branch much further south and that's a really good one.

[Hedera]

Sunnydale - join as a member, if you aren't already. (Only a £1) Then you can attend members' meetings and complain. Write to the head office, I'm sure they'd like to know how much money the branch is losing! And why. It's due to the shop manager so grab him and march him to the offending articles - since we had a new one the shop has become changed out of recognition.

[sunnydale]

Originally Posted by The Woodman

You've put me off Bakewell altogether now!

There's nothing wrong with Bakewell Woody. It's a nice little town (apart from on Mondays which are just too busy) with some interesting shops and a lovely river running through it.

It's just the co op that lets it down

[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!

[ron1863]

Originally Posted by The Woodman

if you want a good read on the subject, spend a tenner on "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal" by Tristram Stuart, published by Penguin.

Apparently, the Coop is the best performing supermarket, 27% more efficient than average and Sainsbury's is the worst being 55% more wasteful than the Coop.

The Coop does not overstock it's shelves for the sake of display and has a policy of reducing the price of products near their sell by date, leading to less waste.

Many supermarkets pass on waste food to charities who donate it to the needy.

In my opinion, there is something fundamentally wrong with sending waste food to landfill.

The average UK household throws away £8 of food each week - £400 per year!

That's the man in the link of the first post.

[Doggle Avaddit]

Hmm, these days I just can't seem to stop being cynical.
I don't know this Tristram bloke, never met him, so can't really come to any conclusion as to how sincere or not he is. He is, perhaps, opening peoples' eyes to something out there that really should be more common knowledge, and that in itself might be a very good thing.

What concerns me is that if you check him and his website out, you find he is a commercial author selling books on the subject. If he was Blogging all this for no commercial gain I might not be so tempted to distrust his motives, but he isn't. This is his career. Thus I cannot be sure that his findings are not skewed in his commercial favour.


I told you I was cynical.



Best to make your own mind up I reckon, don't listen to me.

[The Woodman]

The author has to have some commercial aspect to his work because that's how he earns his money. Whether he has a personal conviction about what he is telling us cannot be determined by reading the book or associated articles.

Like many other environmental authors and books e.g. Charles Clover - End of the Line, Stuart makes us fully aware of situations that we might only have a scant knowledge of. This one is close to home and potentially we are all contributing to this wastefulness by taking advantage of cheap plentiful food - it's only natural.

What upsets me is seeing orchards decaying whilst we drive to Tesco and pick a bag of the best apples we can choose from the heap that have been imported from wherever. Rootcrops ploughed back into the ground because it's not economically viable to harvest them etc. etc.

Perhaps there's merit in buying from the smaller individual retailers who handle smaller amounts of stock and pay a premium price. That might give some personal satisfaction to the purchaser but beyond the retailer, the wholesaler will have to shift his massive stocks.

Should we just accept the situation because we have exactly what we need in terms of food? There are so many aspects to this huge subject that I cannot imagine where the source of the problem is, I have the sneeking feeling the problem is us.