Wednesday, 23 October 2013
The TESCO tonnes - can their food waste be a good thing?
TESCO's 'confessions of a supermarket' has quite rightly generated a great deal of fury amongst consumers. Aside from the staggering amounts of waste associated with shopping at their outlets, its also not just them. Is it less annoying that Waitrose and M+S create huge amounts of food waste? No. Will they be publishing their dirty secrets as well? Let's hope so. I couldn't find any real data. M+S do say however that produce that doesn't make the grade for their stores goes to 'Company Shops' or is redistributed to charities.
What I find annoying about TESCO's data is its presentation. According to the food waste hotspots it focused on - Bananas, Grapes, Bagged Salads, Apples and Bakery, its retail waste is barely 1% - a bit more for Bakery. You can see the retail figure next to their logo, dwarfed by the waste figures related to agriculture, processing and us the consumer. It's as if they've dissociated themselves from any responsibility. No one's fooled. Confusion over use by/sell by dates, BOGOF's, the demand for fruit and veg perfection ... all of these things collude to whittle away what's grown and what's actually eaten.
TESCO helped fund the Sustainable Consumption Institute at Manchester University - set up in 2007, so it makes you wonder why they've been so slow to change their practices.
Of course we can't leave the consumer out of the waste chain. There won't be many saintly types who only buy and eat what they need. The person in this BBC clip is probably representative of many and succumbs to the western disease of over consumption. Food is slung through fear that it is off, the carrots have gone rubbery or the cheese faintly flushed with mould.
According to recent UN report on food waste, one third of the food produced on the planet for us humans is wasted - about 1.3 billions of tonnes. It also says wealthy countries waste more food after consumers purchase it. It's the other way round for poorer countries where more food is wasted in storage and handling.
The numbers are mind boggling. Put another way we could give 1 tonne of food to 1.3 billion very hungry people. Or half a tonne to 2.6 billion people, a quarter of a tonne to 5.2 billion people - whatever, you get the gist. We could feed most of the current population of the world just on our waste food. Bonkers.
Back in 2004/ 2005 I worked for DEFRA on their 'Shopping Trolley Report' looking at the environmental impacts of commonly purchased food items. For a few years after there were a lot of buzz words about 'carbon footprints', 'food chains' and 'life cycle assessment', 'field to fork' etc. Then in 2007 the financial markets went belly up and since then minds have tended to focus on job security and cuts of various kinds.
Now that they've released these figures, TESCO and the other supermarkets will be forced to act. Food waste and sustainability is back in the headlines and supermarkets, with all the power they wield over production, hate those kind of headlines. What's more, after bankers/MPs expenses etc, the general public has never been less forgiving. Supermarkets have to rethink how they impose their will along the food chain.
These are still tough times for millions of householders, now facing huge energy price hikes. But food waste can become a totem for effective change and that has to be a good thing.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Over fed, over weight and over here
The recent UK news has been full of talk of poverty. Poverty means different things depending on where you are in the world. Of course the UK is far more wealthy than most countries but it doesn't make it any easier if for those living below (or just above) the Government's benchmark figure.
On average in the UK we spend about 12% of what the UN calls "private consumption expenditure", or dosh to you and I, on food. The rest goes on clothes, pub, the car etc. It's a figure that has decreased throughout the last century but you only need to consider how in poor countries today people may spend 70% or more on food to get a sense of what things were once like here.
According to the USDA us Brits spend less on food then Italians. Does that make us a wealthier nation? (Some might say so given the current state of their economy though others might say ours is just less brittle). But never mind the quantity what about the quality? Apparently we eat four times as many potatoes - which are cheap - while they spend more on fruit and veg. I'm a strong advocate of chips and gravy so have happily contributed to this spike in the data. But carbs are also cheaper so appeal to people with less dosh - filling and cheap.
But it's the calories, stupid. The UN recommends that humans need a daily intake of around 2100 calories - a target which bar a few is not even attained by low income countries. The States almost doubles that figure with an intake of 3,730 but in another twist Ireland, with it's per capita at the lower end of the rich country list, has an intake of of 3,837. Whereas very rich Japan has an intake of 2,900. Barring sumo wrestlers how many obese Japanese people do you come across? High fish and high veg intakes mark their diet while us Brits, Yanks and Irish all tuck into energy dense meat and dairy products. And a lot of it turned into processed, saturated, cheap products rich in carbs and easy to eat. Which is why this is where the obese people are.
The coalition government say we should be taking more personal responsibility for our diet while opponents argue that what and how we consume is being taking further out of our control by industry and clever marketing - you never get bogofs on fresh vegetables for example - check out Tesco's special offers as of this date below. Look closely and you'll spot the cucumber.
However there is a key argument which gets lost when talking about both obesity and poverty and that is reducing meat consumption. Certainly the 'V' word is seen as way too scary and tyranical. The fact that people have to call it Vegetarianism shows you how lost we are in this country. In India it's just eating! There's all sorts of reasons and excuses given for this but the fact remains that for both human health and that of the environment, meat and dairy is killing us.
So what to do? Get skilled. Keep an eye out for "Veggie Wednesdays" with discounted prices for Beginners and Advanced Veggie Heaven courses.
On average in the UK we spend about 12% of what the UN calls "private consumption expenditure", or dosh to you and I, on food. The rest goes on clothes, pub, the car etc. It's a figure that has decreased throughout the last century but you only need to consider how in poor countries today people may spend 70% or more on food to get a sense of what things were once like here.
According to the USDA us Brits spend less on food then Italians. Does that make us a wealthier nation? (Some might say so given the current state of their economy though others might say ours is just less brittle). But never mind the quantity what about the quality? Apparently we eat four times as many potatoes - which are cheap - while they spend more on fruit and veg. I'm a strong advocate of chips and gravy so have happily contributed to this spike in the data. But carbs are also cheaper so appeal to people with less dosh - filling and cheap.
But it's the calories, stupid. The UN recommends that humans need a daily intake of around 2100 calories - a target which bar a few is not even attained by low income countries. The States almost doubles that figure with an intake of 3,730 but in another twist Ireland, with it's per capita at the lower end of the rich country list, has an intake of of 3,837. Whereas very rich Japan has an intake of 2,900. Barring sumo wrestlers how many obese Japanese people do you come across? High fish and high veg intakes mark their diet while us Brits, Yanks and Irish all tuck into energy dense meat and dairy products. And a lot of it turned into processed, saturated, cheap products rich in carbs and easy to eat. Which is why this is where the obese people are.
The coalition government say we should be taking more personal responsibility for our diet while opponents argue that what and how we consume is being taking further out of our control by industry and clever marketing - you never get bogofs on fresh vegetables for example - check out Tesco's special offers as of this date below. Look closely and you'll spot the cucumber.
However there is a key argument which gets lost when talking about both obesity and poverty and that is reducing meat consumption. Certainly the 'V' word is seen as way too scary and tyranical. The fact that people have to call it Vegetarianism shows you how lost we are in this country. In India it's just eating! There's all sorts of reasons and excuses given for this but the fact remains that for both human health and that of the environment, meat and dairy is killing us.
So what to do? Get skilled. Keep an eye out for "Veggie Wednesdays" with discounted prices for Beginners and Advanced Veggie Heaven courses.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
The Colonel, Libya, Democracy and NATO.
On a similar theme to the last post on Japan and oil, one less immediately discussed consequence of the conflict in Libya and NATO intervention is the rise in oil prices. Various sources say that 1 million barrels of Libyan oil a day have been knocked off the global supply, upping barrel prices by $2.
Curbing despotic behaviour is costly in lives, infrastructure, resources and fuel for those directly involved on both sides.
For those not involved, especially many countries in Sub Sahara Africa, large parts of Asia, Central and South America it can cost lives through hunger and malnutrition, development, political instability etc etc.
These are countries that often have their own dodgy leaderships and tyrannical rule but which tend not to have resources useful enough to warrant any intervention.
Curbing despotic behaviour is costly in lives, infrastructure, resources and fuel for those directly involved on both sides.
For those not involved, especially many countries in Sub Sahara Africa, large parts of Asia, Central and South America it can cost lives through hunger and malnutrition, development, political instability etc etc.
These are countries that often have their own dodgy leaderships and tyrannical rule but which tend not to have resources useful enough to warrant any intervention.
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