When you collect pledges, use some of these interesting facts to help people make good choices around food waste, as well as where packaging can be reused, recycled or reinvented, to create something else.
Some interesting food facts are:
- almost £1.2 billion of food is thrown away every year - that's close to 76 million items
- one in five consumers do not know how to cook
- compared to before the pandemic, households across the UK are having 136 million more meals together at home each week
- 91% of us want to cook as much, or even more, over the next year
- 81% of people want to eat more healthily over the next year
- mealtimes have become more important moments in the day and 73% of people enjoyed cooking at home over the past 12 months
- 4.5 million tonnes of food disposed of in the UK is edible, that’s enough to fill 38 million wheelie bins or 90 Royal Albert Halls
Food packaging facts:
- in the UK, it's estimated that consumers who purchase fast-food for lunch generate about 11 billion items of packaging waste a year
- nationwide, we use 7.7 billion plastic bottles per year. That’s an average of 117 bottles per person, per year
- despite a ‘war on plastic’ we only recycle 45% of plastics in the UK
Food waste facts:
- potatoes are the most wasted single food in the UK, with 1.6 billion thrown away every year
- fruit and vegetables are the most thrown away food group in the UK
- by 2018, UK household food waste had reduced by around 18% which is 1.4 million tonnes a year compared to 2007
- the amount of food saved annually by 2018 would fill 3 Wembley stadia, 30 Royal Albert Halls, 13 million large wheelie bins, 1,300 Olympic swimming pools or 170,000 bin lorries/dustcarts
The financial cost
On an average day, the average household throws away £1.36 worth of food. Over the course of a year, that adds up to £496.
The government has announced £1.15 million worth of funding to help businesses and not-for-profits in England come up with new ways to tackle food waste. Ideally they'll change people’s behaviour or transform food waste into other mater.
The environmental cost
Wasted household food alone is responsible for 21 million tonnes of CO2e. Even if you only count the edible food wasted, it comes to a total of 14 million tonnes.
A circular economy for food could reduce the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, or 5.6 billion tonnes of CO2, by 2050.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, if food waste was a country, it would be the third highest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China.