A common problem experienced when we think about doing our bit, is where to begin? It’s a big question which can leave us feeling frustrated and a little helpless. The fact that we ask at all is a good sign.
Many, don’t have the luxury to breathe, look around and think, too busy surviving, or too poor to start pondering any future generational catastrophe.
Equally, there are some, let’s be honest, many, who avoid such discomfort with an Indochina, pseudo-intellectual approach; there’s no point doing anything until India and China are well on their way to solving their own carbon footprint.
Feel free to replace or add the US into that same mountainous thought. It’s all flawed nonsense for plenty of reasons which don’t need to be discussed today.
A non profit organisation in the US called Project Drawdown has done some research to help us make the biggest difference in our own lives. They’ve ranked the top 20 high-impact climate actions that we can take at home, cutting our carbon footprint by as much as 25 percent.
The number one action and it’s so simple, is to reduce our own food waste.
A scary statistic every year is the world (which could probably be polarised further to first world countries) manages to waste a third of the total food produced. That’s 1 billion tons of food, some of which might make it to our tables, but ends up being thrown away anyway. It rots. The cumulative effect of which is to generate 8% of the world’s greenhouse gases.
This accounts for double the impact of all flights taken in the world every year. It’s also lost calories, in a world where millions starve, plus the wasted money, energy and resources to grow and manufacture all that food in the first place.
Until recently, I thought it was impossible to prevent food waste in our home, yet there is a country of over 51 million people which has managed to virtually eliminate it.
South Korea has had a compulsory roadside composting programme since 2005, when they banned food going into landfills. Citizens are given bags for their food scraps, which is then recycled into animal feed, biogas and fertiliser. Government intervention works.
Geneva of all places, has a charity called Free-Go, which is putting fridges on streets. The first fridge was installed last year outside a community centre and was estimated to save around 3 tonnes of food going to waste.
There are four fridges strategically placed around the city now and the programme is estimated to cost £30,000 per year.
The fridges and pantry shelves are free to be accessed by the public. Restaurants and others drop off food that is close to its use-by date, typically fruit, vegetables and other perishables.
An app called Too Good To Go, available in the UK, has proved popular in London, especially with students and anyone else on a tight budget.
Looking at the UK map on the app, it has now spread far and wide. Restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets heavily discount their menus and perishable food at different times of the day to avoid throwing anything away.
At just gone 4:00pm this Monday, I could buy a surprise bag of bakery goodies from Orée for £3.49 (rather than the usual £10), pick-up from their store between 18:30 - 18:45.
Starbuck’s have another bag, which might include bagels, paninis, salads or maybe a muffin or two? Their bag is yours for £3.59 (£10.75), pick-up after 18:15, but hurry, they only have 3 left.
An activity I wasn’t expecting to find in the UK was a network of gleaners or harvesters, further up the food chain. These are keen volunteers, charities and organisations who connect with local farmers to harvest surplus fruit and vegetables.
Their web site provides tools and resources, empowering communities to salvage the surplus food which would otherwise be left to rot on farms. Instead, they harvest and redistribute it within the local area.
It’s hardly surprising that farmers might overproduce. Growing anything is not an exact science and they have the added pressure of market forces.
They don’t want to run the risk of under-supplying their customers so they plant to their full potential. Good weather can lead to high yields especially for fruit crops, which puts pressure on wholesale prices. If they drop too far it can become uneconomical to harvest if the farmer doesn’t have a pre-agreed buyer and price. Equally, good weather might mean a crop is ready to harvest too early.
Weather isn’t the only factor to consider. Retailers have cosmetic standards for fruit and vegetables which leads to crops being out-graded if they’re not the right size. It’s also not unheard of for supermarkets to cancel orders, regardless of how beautifully symmetrical the apples might be.
This all adds up. Currently we waste about 5 million tonnes of surplus on UK farms every year.
One of the gleaners is a charity called The Felix Project, based in London. They have been incredibly successful, collecting and receiving food from over 540 suppliers including farms, supermarkets, wholesalers and restaurants.
The charity was set-up by Felix’s father, Justin Byam Shaw whose son died suddenly from Meningitis in 2014. He was searching for a way to commemorate his son and remembered a conversation with Felix about a football tournament he’d played in. He’d been concerned that many of the 10-year olds on the other team hadn’t had anything to eat that morning.
1.5 million adults in London struggle to afford to eat every day, 400,000 children are at risk of missing their next meal.
The Felix Project delivers food to 1000 front-line charities, primary schools and holiday programmes in London, making sure that food which would have gone to waste is now reaching more vulnerable and homeless people.
One way which helped us reduce our food waste and gave us some tasty vegetarian meal options instead was to use one of the meal delivery services. We get a delivery on a Monday of 5 brown boxes like this one, which we flat pack and return with the next order. These are meals for two with all the spice mixes and herbs included in small recyclable containers.
I can best describe it as cooking without hours shopping in the supermarket or collecting bottles of pomegranate molasses to sit in our fridge for far too long.
Any scraps gets zapped by our latest kitchen aid, a tardis which desiccates any left overs for compost or the bin.