Staffordshire Moorlands District Council

For example, every day in the UK, we throw away:       

• 7 million slices of bread (worth £360 million a year);
• 5.1 million whole potatoes (worth £302 million a year);
• 4.4 million whole apples (worth £317 million a year); and
• 660,000 whole eggs (worth £50 million a year).

It's not just staple foods that are wasted; we also waste treats and luxury items!

• 82,000 tonnes of cakes and gateaux every day (worth £20 million a year);
• 300,000 unopened packets of crisps (worth £20 million a year);
• 700,000 unopened packets of chocolate and sweets (worth £40 million a year); and
• 2,900 unopened cans or bottles of lager a day (worth just less than £10 million a year).
  

 




The cost of all this food waste - to the consumer, local authorities and the wider economy - is staggering.

• The UK pays for, but does not eat, £10 billion of food every year; that's an average of £420 per household.
• For families with children it's more - an average of £610 a year.
• It costs another £1 billion for local authorities to collect and send most of it to landfill.

In the context of rising food prices and global food shortages, this should make us all stop, think and decide what we can do about it. 

• Every tonne of food waste we avoid saves about 4.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases being emitted to the atmosphere.
• If we stopped wasting all the food that could have been eaten, we could prevent the equivalent of at least 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year - the equivalent to taking one in five cars off our roads.
• We can save money as well as the environment by changing the way we think about food and taking simple steps to stop throwing so much away needlessly.

For advice on perfect portions, recipes, how to save time and money, top tips on storage and more information about the campaign please visit Love Food, Hate Waste.

The full The Food We Waste report or an executive summary are available on the WRAP website.