This is Rubbish is about one thing, reducing the scale of food waste in the UK.

While there are already campaigns working in this area we are a little different in that our focus : did you know less than 40% of food waste is produced by households? Most people are surprised by this, so much attention having been given to households alone. We are interested in engaging people not as consumers but as powerful political agents.

We plant to engage people in the issue of food waste by graphically exposing this waste to the public gaze. In Trafalgar Sq on December 16th we will be doing just this by serving up fruit smoothies from compost caddies, and letting people make their own by selecting delicious ‘waste’ food from our full size mock up skip!

Why not get your voice heard by writing a letter to your local MP and including a couple of our key messages. Or sending our standard letter by snail mail to Dan Norris the minister in charge of food waste policy at DEFRA. Read on >

Going to be in London on December 16th…

No? Well you should be.  5000 (or at least a very large number) are about to be served free lunch in Trafalgar Sq.

Numerous groups are involved each with their own take on reducing food waste in the UK. We will be there handing out free smoothies made from fruit which otherwise would have been land-filled, and talking to people about the food that is wasted before it even gets to them.

Our key messages:

1. Less than 40% of UK food waste is produced by households.

2. We want to see all retailers obliged to report on the food waste they generate in
their activities, with annual reports audited and publicised by an independent commission.

3. We want the government to introduce an obligation upon retailers to reduce
food waste.

Get involved!

We have a growing band of volunteers helping us to make the day a success, we need stewards, assistants for bicycle powered smoothie makers, smoothie dispensers and general hands on deck. If you have a couple of hours spare, get in touch before hand and we will be happy to make you part of the team and you can help decide where the campaign goes in the future.

info@thisisrubbish.org.uk

On Friday 28th August myself and the skipped smoothie retinue Rachel Solnick and Ellie Stevens visited one of the main fruit veg wholesale markets in the UK, serving all of London the Midlands, East Anglia and Kent. We went to reclaim some of the food waste that is generated daily at the market. It was our mission to relocate the misplaced food, mix the ripe and fragrant fruits and virile vegetables into immune boosting smoothies and distribute them for free to attendees of climate camp, using the great tasting smoothies as an example of the ludicrous scale of good food going to waste on a daily basis in the UK. However, before transporting the free and perfectly edible fruit to the Blackheath climate camp, the shock of physically encountering such enormous piles of mouth watering fruit and veg destined for landfill and anaerobic biodigesters jolted me into vowing to examine the UK food production line.

Food consumption in the UK accounts for an average of 1.5tonnes per person of CO2 emissions annually, almost the same quantity of C02 emissions generated from average flying habits of UK residents (1.2tonnes). It is estimated that the UK, EU and America throw away almost half of the food that they produce and import. If the food industry and individuals reduced their food waste by half, then carbon emissions related to food production would be cut by 50%.  However, it is not simply the carbon emissions associated with food waste that are problematic, but also the unnecessary consumption of resources and the social injustice that food waste perpetuates. Read on >

In December This Is Rubbish Will be contributing to Tristram Stuart’s Feeding The Five Thousand event in Trafalgar Square. We will be handing out free smoothies made entirely from fruit that hasn’t passed the exacting aesthetic standards of a major wholesale market.

We are expecting a good number of people * so most of the smoothies will be prepared before hand. But we will also be making smoothies during the event and all the fruit will be stored in our very own mockup skip. Making the point that this good food shouldn’t be in a skip in the first place, eating thrown out food isn’t an ideal, the ideal is a system where good food isn’t thrown out.

*5000 would be a good number of people.

If you do a quick Google search for UK food waste you will quickly find out that UK households waste 8.3 Million tonnes of food per year, most of which is perfectly edible.

This is a lot of food, and a great deal of expense. Roughly £480 a year for an average household. For this reason we are glad that campaigns like Love Food : Hate Waste exist, offering practical tips on how all of us can cut our food waste and improve our budgeting.

However, there is a question that isn’t so easily answered. How much food is wasted before it gets to the supermarket shelves or the restaurant table?  Well, if you are persistent in checking all the pages that Google brings to your attention you may find the website of Inetec.  And they make an interesting claim.  Apparently the UK wastes around 17 Million tonnes of food a year, a third of which is produced by large scale food processes.  The breakdown of food waste is therefore roughly 8 million tonnes by households, 6 million tonnes during food manufacture and 3 million tonnes by supermarkets and restaurants.

This Is Rubbish has been in contact with Charlotte Henderson at WRAP and established that they are doing work on food waste from field to supermarket shelf:

“We are carrying out research at the moment to understand how much and where product is lost in the retail supply chain. This includes waste at manufacturing sites, in distribution and back of store, covering the grocery supply chain.” Read on >

Hello world, welcome along to the start of our campaign This is Rubbish. There will be lots of exciting news up on this site soon along with an explanation of what we are all about.

For the meantime the key message is: we are going to be officially launching our campaign by helping Tristram Stuart to feed 5000 people from food that otherwise would have been wasted in Trafalguar Sq in December to coincide with the Copenhagen climate talks. To get involved email us info@thisisrubbish.org.uk

Alternatively, join our facebook group, find out more as the campaign develops.

Finally, you can also follow us on twitter, youtube and flickr.