This is Rubbish

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TOP PICKS

Food scandal hits Venuzuela's food distribution network

Sainsburys is to invest millions of pounds in technology aimed at giving it the ability to work around the weather patterns that can leave the retailer woth stock left unsold on shelved. Sainsburys was keen to point out that it would see the benefits both in stock management and greenhouse gas emissions. It expects the level of unsold stock to drop by 15% or 1 400 tonnes of CO2. (More here, here, here, here and here).

The oft-cited statistic is that Americans waste nearly 40 percent of their food. As the Washington Post points out, that figure comes from a 2009 report by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that attempted to examine food waste on a national level. Surprisingly, it was one of the first peer-reviewed papers to do that. The statistic doesn't represent individual food waste — such as what we throw out at home — but rather the total loss along the entire supply chain. That includes processing loss, food that goes bad during transportation, damaged supermarket produce, uneaten restaurant food, and everything in between.

The new Secretary of State for the Environement, Food, and Rural affairs Caroline Spelman highlighted the importance of anaerobic digestion as a treatment solution and the need for steady input streams. The secretary of state said:  "There are places like hospitals and big catering outlets which have quite a large volume of food waste which could easily be collected and used for anaerobic digestion, providing a constant stream which could be used by a digester, which needs a steady stream. The bottom line is that organic waste should not be going to landfill."

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The ecologist cover TiR.

Do we create waste by being overly cautious?

Food waste tracking

Food waste nasties from Jonathan Bloom

Whilst food waste recycling rolls out so do the anti-waste collection horror stories.

Reducing the carbon, waste and water footprints of Australia's food industry to ensure products have minimal impact on the environment is the resopnsibility of the "whole of the supply chain" and the consumer according to the Austratian Food and Grocery Council.

This author blames induviduals.

Twenty tonnes of food have been piled up at Southbank in Melbourne as part of a campaign to raise awareness about food waste.

Food waste on residential and commercial levels spell energy and resource losses.  For one thing, energy is wasted from the field to the fork that, by some estimates, reaches as much as 50 percent.

In 2009, Walmart began using the U.S. EPA Food Waste Hierarchy and now donates the "bulk of its excess food" to the Feeding America program.

"Anaerobic digestion is the greenest win for the commercial food industry".

Japanese chef in Sydney incentivises cleaning your plate.

One of many, Lancaster City Council is to begin fortnightly collections of Food Waste in August, in a revamp of its refuse and recycling schemes, detailed on new calendars now dropping through letterboxes across the district.

The national Waste and Resources Action Programme has been running a number of evaluation studies across the country for several years, working in partnership with both metropolitan and rural councils to see which schemes work best.

In the US: "Roughly fifty percent of food is thrown out before it even makes it to our supermarket shelves; most because of cosmetic problems"

In Austalia organisations who distribute waste food to those in need are being offered grants.

Twenty tonnes of food have been piled up at Southbank in Melbourne as part of a campaign to raise awareness about food waste.

In the last twelve months, the amount of waste Marks & Spencer sent for landfill disposal fell by 33% while the amount of food waste generated has reduced by 20%