Derby agrees - Wasting Food: it’s Out of Date!
Published: 16 October 2020
Derby City Council is proud to support the launch of a new environmental initiative – Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date
- We can all reduce the impact of climate change through not wasting our food, says WRAP.
- If every UK citizen avoided wasting food for one day at home, it could do the same for climate change as planting 500,000 trees.
- Derby City Council is supporting by giving residents the chance to win one of 10 food waste reduction kits
Derby City Council is proud to support the launch of a new environmental initiative – Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date.
Powered by WRAP, the UK’s leading sustainability charity, Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date is a fresh new brand aimed at raising awareness of the huge impact wasting food has on climate change. It has been created to help people realise the urgency of the situation, where precious resources including water, agricultural land, and energy are wasted when food ends up in the bin.
To help get the conversation started in homes across the city, Derby City Council has 10 food waste reduction kits for residents to win by answering one quick question. Take the short survey.
In order to safeguard our planet for future generations, we must make wasting food socially unacceptable.
Small actions, big impact
In the UK, 9.5 million tonnes of food are wasted every year; 70% of this comes from our homes. Of that, 4.5 million tonnes could have been eaten.
Dynamic videos and infographics will be shared from the Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date Instagram and Twitter channels, as well as on the website, to explain in detail the environmental cost of wasting key items of food. The website will also host an interactive quiz to help people see how much food they actually waste at home.
- Bread waste in UK homes accounts for 318,000 tonnes of CO2 generated every year – equal to over 140,000 cars. If everyone in the UK stopped wasting bread for a year it could do the same for climate change as planting over 5 million trees.
- Bananas are one of the most commonly wasted fruits in UK homes; it takes 3,000 hectares of land to grow the bananas we waste every year. 920,000 bananas are wasted every day at home, requiring 330 billion litres of water annually.
- We waste 1.2 million tomatoes from our homes every single day, which is also a waste of the 15 million litres of water that were needed to grow them.
Sarah Clayton, Head of Citizen Behaviour Change at WRAP, said:
Our research shows that, although 81% of people in the UK are concerned about climate change, only 37% understand that wasting food is something which contributes to it. We are launching Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date to help people recognise what a vital opportunity we have to make a difference, to make sure all those precious resources that we use growing food do not go to waste. Our food is as precious as our planet; we must make wasting food a thing of the past.
Councillor Jonathan Smale, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Streetpride said:
We all know that recycling and reducing our waste is good for the planet, but we might not realise how much of an impact wasting food has. I hope the people of Derby will get behind Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date – because it’s not just our pockets that suffer when we waste food, it’s our planet too.
Follow Wasting Food: It’s Out of Date on Instagram and Twitter, and visit the website to find out more and to get started taking action.