Posted:
Tuesday - February 28, 2023
12:32 pm
It's a massive problem. And the short answer: it’s all of us - governments and policy makers, businesses and organisations, communities, households and individuals.
Most of us could reduce our household food waste and also save a bit of money by planning and shopping thoughtfully, being savvy with leftovers and learning a few smart recipes.
Organisations and businesses also come up with imaginative solutions to food waste.
Examples in Lincolnshire include:
- We’re Jammin’ group at Mint Lane makes condiments from waste food, sold in returnable jars through the new
- Condiment Club membership, and local business Eat More Good Stuff made Souperpots are soups from surplus veg;
- Lincoln Prison introduced drying technology to transform its food waste;
- Garden Organic’s Master Composter programme to encourage home composting, and
- Transition Town, Louth’s community composting project.
In 2021, the Food Partnership brought together a consortium of foodbanks and community larders across Lincolnshire, and together with the Lincolnshire Coop, the Lincoln Community Foundation and Fareshare Midlands, established a food hub and distribution system to redirect perfectly good surplus food away from landfill and into foodbanks, community larders, food coops, membership supermarkets, low cost cafes, and other organisations across the county, with the help of volunteers.
These organisations and volunteers are motivated by kindness and solidarity to meet the urgent need of people in our communities facing an emergency. Increasingly they are needed by people who cannot afford to feed their families through the cost of living crisis, or get by on a day to day level. (Please lend your support - there’s a map on our website if you need to find your nearest, and details of how to get involved.)
However, surplus food distribution by volunteers through foodbanks and Fareshare Midlands, is not a long term solution to food waste or poverty: it is symptomatic of a terribly broken food system.
It’s also a losing battle to lecture individuals on wasting food when the supermarket model is reliant on us over-purchasing.
A more holistic approach goes upstream for policies to address poverty head on, andapply “the polluter pays” principle so that the real cost of food reflects the environmental and social impact it has, including the cost of waste.
We can all participate in reducing food waste (with the necessary enabling policy) by understanding and valuing food, and cooking and eating with the seasonal and regional availability. This implies a deeper connection with food, farming and land than the supermarket shelves can offer us, such as: urban spaces to grow food (community gardens and educational sites, allotment provision, well designed peri-urban land use); time to take pleasure in cooking from scratch; emphasis on food growing, cooking and taste exploration on the school curriculum and site, e.g. TastEd; post 16 learning and training opportunities (we find Denmark’s MAD Academy particularly inspiring).
Taking a holistic perspective, the journey to a less wasteful food system need not be one of consumer guilt, but one of connection, fairness, health and enjoyment.
This article is published in the Lincoln Independent, March 2023
Find out more about:
Greater Lincolnshire Food Partnership
FareShare Midlands
Lincolnshire Co-op
Lincolnshire Community Foundation
