15p out of every £ spent on food is thrown away....what a waste

COOLTRIKERCHICK · 16 March 2007 at 9:15AM

for every £1 spent on food 15p of it is thrown away on average.....

what a blinking waste........i am sure that our past generations would be horrified:eek: with that....

i put it down to impulse buying at the supermarkets....and i must admit i was one of then that used to throw loads of food away each week....as we didnt eat it by the sell by date was up.....

now i hardly have any waste.... first of all because of the brill os.... plus now that i am not going to supermarkets for my shopping..... there is practically 0 waste.... and what waste there is the dog eats and the chicken...

apple_mint · 16 March 2007 at 9:40AM

Practically zero waste here too Cooltrikerchick. I like to get 'free soup' from all the odds and ends in the fridge and as time has gone on I've managed to get estimating what I need more in line with what I will use.

If 15p is the average, and we MSE's are not throwing food into the bin ... how much is being thrown away in some households? Someone else is diffinately using my 15p per pound!

overlykeensaver · 16 March 2007 at 9:47AM

they said on Radio 4 this morning that on average we throw away one third of our food purchase. Incredible! But then half of that is veg peelings, used teabags and so on. Even so it is an enormous amount of waste - wasted food and wasted money.

One of the reasons they gave was that so many people can't cook any more so cannot make a meal out of random ingredients in the fridge and cupboard. They just throw them away and buy for a particular meal!

I am sure other MSEs are the same but we enjoy making a creation out of the fridge and cupboard once a week we call it "what's in the fridge pasta" and very tasty it usually is too!

Addiscomber · 16 March 2007 at 9:48AM

and our 15p!

I don't understand why they are counting things like used T bags though? A used T bag isn't food wasted, although it should be composted if possible.

bexbex · 16 March 2007 at 9:49AM

Nothing of mine is wasted, all the left overs go on the garden

We have a bokashi composter in the kitchen so all the scraps of food etc go in there and are made into compost for the garden.
They're great things, I recomend them to everyone! My council actually gave me 2 of them free through a promotion too so even more money saving.

overlykeensaver · 16 March 2007 at 9:52AM

does the bokashi composter sit in your kitchen bexbex? How much space does it take up? and then do you chuck it on your soil after a few weeks?

bexbex · 16 March 2007 at 9:59AM

It takes hardley any room up at all, I'll take a pic in a min to show you! lol
You add a little bit of the bran you need to turn in into compost and keep draining the liquid off it. It doesn't smell bad, just sweet. The liquid can be put down the drain to keep the drains fresh too, or diluted and used as plant food.
When it's finished you add it all to your big composter outside or dig it in some sil somewhere for a few weeks as will be too asidic to put straight onto the plants.

COOLTRIKERCHICK · 16 March 2007 at 10:03AM

lets say you spend an average of £50 per week on shopping ....according to these figures mentioned on the bbc breakfast programme you would be throwing away
50 x 15p .....= £7.50:eek:

and as you say apple-mint that is averaged out... so there are some households throwing out a loty more than that...

and they wonder why they havent got any money....

bexbex · 16 March 2007 at 10:08AM

If this works it shows you the bokashi composter I have in my kitchen.
You can put everything in it, cooked meat, cheese, fish, anything (except teabags.. lol, too much water in them but you can always add them to the big composter bin) You just fill it up, leave it 2 weeks and add it to the garden. You need 2 so when you're waiting 2 weeks for the other one to do it's thing you start filling the spare up.

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angelavdavis · 16 March 2007 at 10:17AM

I do find it absolutely incredible that so much is thrown away. When I first started moneysaving, I kept a list of everything I threw away over a couple of weeks and totalled up using the receipts from the supermarket what, in money terms it amounted to, I was staggered! Never again! Now I chop up vegetables if I think they are unlikely to be cooked and make up puddings to try to use up milk, etc.

I compost everything too BexBex as I have a large garden, we have four compost bins and a wormery for uncooked and garden waste and a green cone for cooked waste.

I have been staying more often at my OH's house and he doesn't really have much room for composting facilities, I had to throw a half pack of spinach away as it had suddenly gone horrible and slimey last night and I felt so guilty about it :mad: I had throwing food away!

I think I might look into getting one of these composters - they sound great!

overlykeensaver · 16 March 2007 at 10:21AM

thanks bexbex these look great. Think I will head over to the gardening forum to talk more about composting!

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15p out of every £ spent on food is thrown away....what a waste

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