As part of my research, and to give me a broader sense of the problem, I’ve been reading Tristram Stuart’s book ‘Waste – Uncovering The Global Food Waste Scandal’. There a lot of very interesting and shocking points made in the book along with even more shocking statistics to back them up. I’ve been thinking about the best way to encourage people to waste less food and it seems simply making people more aware of the problem would be a massive step in the right direction. Stuart makes this point in his book and also states that the more aware people are the more pressure they will start putting on food suppliers to waste less. There is massive unnecessary waste all the way up the food chain and a lot of this could be changed by supermarkets changing their views on things like cosmetic standards, ordering more than they can sell and multibuy deals which encourage waste. People’s perceptions would also need to change, how would you feel if you walked into the supermarket at the end of the day and the shelves were almost empty? Most people would feel the food is somehow inferior, not as good or fresh as if the shelves were fully stocked and this encourages supermarkets to order way more than they will sell. As if food is somehow a ‘commodity’ that we have an infinite supply of.
I feel that at the core of the issue is that fact that we don’t respect food enough, we don’t give a second thought to the work, effort and limited resources that have gone into producing it. Simply put, we don’t appreciate our food.
Tristram Stuart (the author I talked about above) has also given a really interesting TedTalk on the subject of food waste, its a really good starting point if you’d like to know a little more.
Donald Struthers Honours Project 