design for a sustainable future
Category: food
Love Food Hate Waste
Love Food Hate Waste was set up in November 2007 to better understand and tackle the issue of food waste in the UK.
Love Food Hate Waste works hard to raise the awareness of this important issue underpinning its' campaigning with comprehensive consumer research. The "Food We Waste" report, launched in early 2008 has been the source of a number of provocative headlines which the campaign has taken out to the industry and to consumers - i.e. that a third of all the food we buy is thrown away. From the report the campaign has been able to qualify the environmental impact of this waste i.e the CO2 equivalent if we did not waste all this food is like taking 1 in 5 cars off the road. Another key element of early campaigning has been to highlight the personal financial implication to consumers to help motivate behaviour change - £50 a month for the average family, for example.
But Love Food Hate Waste is much more than a headline. A key part of what we offer is practical tips and solutions including recipes, portioning tools, storage advice and testimonials, and much, much more, to help British consumers make the changes we all need to. The Love Food Hate Waste website (www.lovefoodhatewaste.com ) acts as the main repository for much of this information. Partnerships have also been forged, including ones with major grocery and retail brands and community organisations like the Women's Institute, to help take our message out further. A number of Local Authorities have also been active with Love Food Hate Waste in taking the food waste message and advice out to their residents.
The Love Food Champions project shows how the campaign is working within communities to drive down food waste. The project was piloted between Love Food Hate Waste and the Women?s Institute in 2008. Led by a "Food Champion", over a three month period, groups of women met weekly to learn more about the issue and how they could cut their own waste. The pilot was a success, with participants cutting the food they threw away by half, and making big savings on their food bills.
A number of Local Authorities are looking at running similar groups locally with the rollout due this year.
Retailers naturally play a major role in reducing food waste. Through Love Food Hate Waste the UK's top grocery retailers, brands and manufacturers came together and signed up to an industry-wide food waste reduction objective (Courtauld Commitment) for the first time. This is designed to deliver considerable savings to UK consumers of more than £370 million and equate to a saving of almost 700,000 tonnes of CO2 or taking 220,000 cars off the road for a year.
Signatories of the Courtauld Commitment have agreed to work together to help reduce the amount of food the nation?s householders throw away by 155,000 tonnes by 2010.
There is much more to do but we do know that since the launch of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign in 2007, 1.8 million more UK households are now taking steps to cut back on the amount of food they throw away, resulting in an overall saving of £296 million a year, stopping 137,000 tonnes of food being thrown away. This prevents 600,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases being emitted, which is the same carbon impact as taking 100,000 return flights to Australia out of the skies.
Text sunmitted by Love Food Hate Waste - for more information about how to drive down food waste please visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com