Howdy Folks!
Just now I’ve finished watching the second episode of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “War on Waste”, a show that brings into the spotlight just how badly clothing and food is wasted, food wasted mostly by the supermarkets. It was a truly eye-opening couple of episodes that brought the sheer scale of the problem into sharp focus, and also how we cannot trust our supermarkets to do the right thing or believe that what they do say about food waste.
You’ll undoubtedly have noticed my header image is of Hugh standing in front of a huge pile of parsnips. Those are some of the rejects from a farm he visits during the course of the filming.
To give an idea of how bad it is, the two episodes show:
- What a pile of 7 tons of clothing looks like, with that amount being thrown away every 10 minutes in the UK.
- A farm shows just how much of their harvest goes to waste, with one pile in the show they do rough maths to realise that the pile could probably fill 280 large shopping trolleys, from that single farm. The farm goes out of business during the filming of the show as they have been running at a loss.
- The same farm shows Hugh a large number of altered orders, with original orders being made the previous day with revised orders being filed the next morning, cutting the order by huge amounts which causes issues as the vegetables had already been dug up in order to be ready for collection.
- Morrisons make a pathetic show of an experiment to show that customers buy the better veg, but due to using courgettes that were soft it was clearly rigged to fail and afterwards Hugh has a discussion with the managers who simply spend most the time smirking and not taking anything seriously.
- Morrisons also threatened the farmers Hugh talked to during the filming, telling them to bury the issue, as they were trying to avoid having the interview in the first place.
Those are just a handful of points. One observation I would make though, is that if they really wanted to do a fair test on the sale of these supposedly aesthetically different vegetables, they should have bagged the good and the bad in the same bags together and seen if anyone actually noticed. If nothing else, the spare could be packed, frozen and shipped to places that are going hungry, not just in the UK but anywhere.
It isn’t just the supermarkets of course, we also need to try and recycle and use as much of the food we buy as possible. Try not to take the sell by dates too literally, and judge for yourself whether the food is good or not. Also, try finding recipes for the leftover food you have, you might be surprised what you can do with it! If I have supper at night I’ll actively look for anything that’s going out of date, and hopefully that way spare it from later ending up in the bin.
I personally try to waste as little food as possible, and really don’t mind if something looks a bit odd or isn’t entirely as good as it could be, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. Having also gutted a fish and a deer during my time at scouts or cooking in general I also appreciate not wasting food from a sense of doing justice to the animal as you’ve had to kill it in order to eat it. Being an environmental student just makes it even more stark just how wasteful it is when much of this food could go to the needy.
The programs for Hugh’s War on Waste can be watched here!
If at this point you feel as strongly as I do about the amount of waste being created by our supermarkets, then follow this link, and tell Hugh that you want to see an end to this level of waste! https://wastenotuk.com/
Thanks as always for reading all, after all, issues like this matter!
Raving Over Sweet Nothings 