Most food waste still goes into red bins of mixed waste bound for landfill. It’s using up precious landfill space and harming the environment when it could produce valuable compost and biogas instead.
Wasted food – and land, labor, chemicals, water and energy.
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Reducing food waste at home is an action that anyone can take to help slow climate change, often saving money in the process. More consumer education could help show people what to do.
UK supermarket chains have dropped the use of “best before” date labels to reduce the amount of food being thrown out when it’s still perfectly edible. It’s just as big a problem in Australia.
Supermarkets are beginning to remove date labels on fruit and veg to tackle the food waste issue.
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British households waste nearly 32% of all purchased food items per year.
Without obvious signs of contamination like the mold in this jam, consumers use expiration dates to decide whether to keep or throw away food.
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Ending GST on some foods is being touted as a way to reduce food poverty. But cheap food comes with a high environmental and health cost. Is there a way to value food but reduce hardship?
In an effort to reduce the growing problem of food waste disposal, researchers are focusing on developing new green technologies that use food waste to generate clean energy.
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A recent survey finds that the pandemic made it harder for many US households to put food on the table. It also changed the ways in which people buy and store food.
The hidden costs of industrial food production include immense health and environmental impacts. These include millions of deaths, climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.
The environmental footprint of reusable containers may not be as light as we think.
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Reusable containers may have to be reused many times to offset their negative environmental impacts - improving recycling infrastructure could be the answer.
The food waste households create could be turned into a source of sustainable energy.
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Biogas is often overlooked as a source of renewable energy, but it could be a solution to dealing with the 9.5 million tonnes of food waste created by the UK every year.
Scientists are looking for safe new ways to prevent ice from damaging food in frozen storage, which costs consumers billions of dollars a year in wasted food.