Interesting Facts

Hamburg, Germany has banned coffee pods from all state-run buildings as part of an environmental drive to reduce waste. (In fact, the inventor of the American version of the coffee capsule, John Sylvan, has admitted he regrets ever inventing them due to their environmental impact:  Some pods contain 6 grams of coffee, but have 3 grams of packaging, and because they are made of mixed materials, combined with organic content, they are extremely difficult to recycle. Imagine if cars were sold like that.)

Ac cording to a survey commissioned by Love Food / Hate Waste, nearly 1 in 5 UK households admits to binning an entire loaf of bread before even opening or slicing it. (Emma Marsh, head of the Love Food / Hate Waste campaign, run by the government’s waste advisory body Wrap, said: “...sometimes if we don’t finish a loaf, it goes stale and ends up in the bin. There are simple things we can do to use it up or store it differently, to reduce food waste and save money.” I often throw away parts of a loaf, but rarely the whole thing.  I usually make breadcrumbs from stale bread.)

The Bill and Melinda Gate's foundation has managed to help develop a waste plant that converts the sludge from sewers, which contains solid human waste (pooh) into drinkable water and bioenergy. (The Janicki Omniprocessor, designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle, could be a solution to poor sanitation in developing countries, which kills around 700,000 children every year. Bill Gates trusts it enough to drink a glass of extracted water, so ... Maybe a smaller household version could be created, and we can all benefit.)

British supermarket chain Tesco has announced it will introduce a “one date” system to stop customer confusion between display dates and use-by dates. (The confusion arises because shoppers often throw out items based on their sell-by or display date, but this date is only used by the sellers for stock control, and doesn't actually mean the product is unfit for consumption.  The expiration date, or use by date is the one that relates to food safety.  For food items, maybe it should be called an "eat by" date.)

According to research carried out by WRAP (the UK's Waste and Resources Action Programme ) , the average UK household throws away enough food to make 6 meals every week (The waste costs almost £60 a month per family, but, according to farming UK if you add it all together it's worth a whopping £12.5 billion a year.  The top three foods that we are throwing away uneaten are those every day essentials: bread, potatoes and milk. The equivalent of 24 million slices of bread, 5.8 million potatoes and 5.9 million glasses of milk are wasted daily.) Source

According to a report published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, up to 30% of vegetables in the UK are not harvested because of their physical appearance. (Wonky carrots and blemished fruit don't sell, and so they are left to rot.   I guess that since the end of That's Life we just don't know what to do with them.) Source - http://www.imeche.org/Libraries/Reports/IMechE_Global_Food_Report.sflb.ashx

According to a report published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, between 30% and 50% of the world's food goes to waste. (This means around two billion tonnes, of the four billion tonnes of food produced around the world each year, ends up not being eaten, and half the food bought in Europe and the US is thrown away. The reasons seem to range from poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate transport and storage, best before dates on food, and those notorious BOGOFF (buy-one-get-one-free) offers, that encourage consumers to buy more than they need. I would say that in Europe it could be down to weekly shopping too.  Once upon a time we bought food fresh from markets, but nowadays we do a weekly shop, and something is bound to go off in that time.  My worst culprit is salad items.  The number of half eaten cucumbers I've thrown away...) You can read the report here. http://www.imeche.org/Libraries/Reports/IMechE_Global_Food_Report.sflb.ashx

Berlin waste management company BSR, collects around 400,000 Christmas trees each year. (At this time of year in Germany people throw out their old Christmas trees for collection.  Many are shredded, recycled as wood chips and finally used in the production of wooden pellets for central heating systems. Some cities in Germany burn discarded Christmas trees to generate heat and electricity. In some areas, up to the 25th of January, the council lets you know when to put your tree out for collection, but in most areas, one person will put a tree on a street corner, and then the next day there will be 20 to 30 of them there.)

According to research published in the U.S. journal Science, microbes used to treat human waste might also generate enough electricity to power whole sewage plants. (Imagine if they can extend that to the domestic loo?  The whole family could get involved in recharging  electronic devices.) Source

It is cheaper to ship waste from London to Shenzen in China than it is to send it by road from London to Manchester. (The world has officially gone mad.)

Disposable nappies account for 2.5% of annual household waste in the UK. (Who counted them?)