Best before end throw away facts

Following on from our last post we have further facts as to why the environment secretary is so desperately trying to reduce the amount of perfectly good edible food we throw into our bins every day.

• 5 million potatoes
• 4.4 million whole apples
• One million loaves of bread
• One million slices of ham

The total amount is a mind boggling £10 billion every single year!

The Food Standards Agency believes that under European law use-by dates were still required, so the key seems to be arming consumers with more knowledge so they can make better informed decisions about what foods are OK to use after their use-by date and which foods are not.

Among the plans suggested by the Government yesterday include the following:

• To report supermarkets that use "excessive" packaging to Trading Standards.
• Retailers will be asked to use more recycled material and provide smaller portions to stop single people having to buy too much
• Recycling rates will be given a boost by collecting more bottles and tins from pubs, clubs and restaurants and providing "on-the-go" recycling points at airports or street corners for people to put in newspapers and plastic bottles.
• Councils will be encouraged to start collecting more materials for recycling, for example different plastics other than plastic bottles

Rubbish Banned!

The latest government proposal aimed at easing the overflowing land fill sites is to ban food, glass and drinks cans from our rubbish bins. This would most likely be enforced by fines to anyone who falls foul.
It is widely expected that this will be one of a number of plans to be introduced by the Environment Secretary Hilary Benn later today.
Another expected proposal is likely to be clearing up the mystery that surrounds "best before" and "use by" dates on perishable goods which would help towards reducing the average family waste of £610 of perfectly good food each year, a statistic that has to change if the government are going to really tackle the our throw away society.

Following on from this story we have heard that a company in the US Boxed Water Is Better plans on selling water in cartons (if you couldn't catch that from the title) which they believe will reduce the carbon footprint normally associated with bottled water by up to 80%. The only problem which industry experts see from this is the Tetra Pak carton which holds the water can't even be recycled here, they have to be shipped abroad, whoops!

Gift voucher rewards for recycling

An innovative US recycling project is soon to hit the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the UK. This project involves offering incentives in the form of gift vouchers and money off coupons based on how much and regularly each household recycles.
It would work by putting an identification chip in each bin or box that when partnered with the recycle truck that takes the recycled goods away would record how much was recycled on that occasion.
It has a lot of similarities to a recent attempt from some councils to tax residents based on the amount of rubbish they threw away into there wheelie bins however this recent incentive scheme is likely to go down a whole lot better than the tax ever did.

The results from the US users on this scheme have been staggering and it is likely to work just as well over here with the public seemingly willing to break a normal routine when a tangible benefit such as money or coupons is dangled in front of their face. Some examples include surveys, clubcards and questionnaires.

If you would like further information on this please go to Veolia Environmental Services