The government has appointed a food waste champion to tackle the problem of 250m meals being thrown away in the UK each year.Will they have to undergo a Thunderdome-style clash with the obesity champion, I wonder?
Elliot’s first task will be to oversee the Food Waste Fund, a £15m pilot scheme which will redistribute surplus food, Gove said.
Working with businesses and other stakeholders from across retail, manufacturing, hospitality and food services, he will also support government consultations on the introduction of mandatory food waste reduction targets and redistribution obligations.You can all look forward to prices going up in the supermarkets then. Don't worry, they'll just blame Brexit!
Elliot said: “While families all over the country struggle to put food on the table and children still go to school each day with empty stomachs, there continues to be an unforgivable amount of food waste, which is both morally deplorable and largely avoidable.
“As a nation, we need to stop this excessive waste and ensure that surplus food finds its way to people in our society who need it most, and not let it get thrown away and go to landfill.”Who is this cretin to tell us what is 'morally deplorable?
In his role as chair of the Quintessentially Foundation, Elliot, who is the Duchess of Cornwall’s nephew...Ah. I take no lessons in morality from such.
...has worked with the Felix Project, a charity targeting food waste and food poverty in London which claims to have diverted up to £1bn of surplus food to those in need.Has anyone tested the claims? No? Didn't think so.
And don't believe all you read about piles of 'wasted' food rotting in mountains. It's just not true.
Currently around 43,000 tonnes of surplus food is redistributed from retailers and food manufacturers every year, the government says. It is estimated a further 100,000 tonnes of food – equating to 250m meals a year – is edible and readily available but goes uneaten. Instead, it is sent away for generating energy from waste, or for animal feed.Which will in turn provide more food and the energy to heat that food. So it's not 'wasted' at all.
6 comments:
Tim worstall demolished this a few days ago:
The Scandal Of Food Waste – 0.35% Of All Meals Are Wasted .
"..the problem of 250m meals being thrown away in the UK each year."
Population of the UK: 67,000,000 [1]
Meals per day: 4 [2]
Days per year: 365.
Meals per year: 97,820,000,000
Number of those that are going to waste for which a sinecure is required: 0.26%
No, not 26%.
Nor 2.6%.
0.26%.
Clearly a gross problem that requires someone to be given a job title, and be seen to be doing something.
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[1] Rounded, but will do for this. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/
[2] Given the current alleged 'obesity crisis,' it's incomprehensible for this to be less than 4, since for every person eating 3 meals a day, someone must be eating 5 or more.
So thats, what, roughly 3 to 4 meals per person per year? About 1% of food then. Absolutely amazing how low we have got that figure now, isn't it? It's basically nothing.
Fun correlation: will banning plastic packaging and cling-film increase or decrease that percentage?
"Fun correlation: will banning plastic packaging and cling-film increase or decrease that percentage?"
Depends on whether they consider food not yet part of a meal, part of a meal.
i.e. if they want the numbers to go up, because "it's not working. More needs to be done," or down because "see? it was needed. More needs to be done.
It looks to me as though they are setting up new sinecures to replace the ones that would have been supplied by the EU. Once they can no longer swan off to Brussels and get paid a fat salary for pretending to do a non job they are going to need an alternative.
"Tim worstall demolished this a few days ago:"
Yup, he and Chris Snowden are my go-to sources for Wrap pummelling...
"Clearly a gross problem that requires someone to be given a job title, and be seen to be doing something."
Got to employ all those university graduates somehow - McDonalds can't take them all!
"Fun correlation: will banning plastic packaging and cling-film increase or decrease that percentage?"
*rummages for individually-wrapped multipack bag of popcorn*
"It looks to me as though they are setting up new sinecures to replace the ones that would have been supplied by the EU. "
Spot on!
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