We throw away half of our food on Saturday the 19th of January
A new report by the The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, published last week, estimates that up to “50% of all food produced never reaches a human stomach”. That’s up to 2 billion tonnes of perfectly good food wasted every year!
One of the recommendations is government policy to influence consumer behaviour to reduce household food waste. Why don’t we start wasting less today, before it even gets that far?
We waste almost as much as subSaharan Africa produces on Saturday the 8th of December
Consumer food waste in industrialized countries (222 million ton) is almost as high as the total net food production in subSaharan Africa (230 million ton)!
Find many more mind-blowing facts about food waste in a report on Global Food Losses and Food Waste published by the FAO.
Share your recipes for less waste.
St. Andrews Prize for the Environment Submission on Friday the 2nd of November
UseTheFood has just entered the race for the St. Andrews Prize for the Environment. The Prize is an initiative by the University of St Andrews in Scotland and recognises and rewards significant contributions to environmental conservation. Since its launch in 1998 it has attracted entries from more than 50 countries every year on the most diverse topics imaginable, all to do with doing good for the environment.
We’ll keep you posted on how we’re getting on. In the mean time, keep sharing recipes.
Why is food waste so bad? on Sunday the 28th of October
Almost 1 billion people around the world are undernourished, making hunger a worse killer than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined! Yet we waste around 1.3 billion tonnes of food a year. In terms of calories, that could feed the starving part of the world’s population three times over.
Food waste has repercussions on many other issues. The average amount of water that is needed to produce food is about 1000 times the weight of the food itself! Binning a loaf of bread is the equivalent of pouring away 1200 litres of water. That’s five bathtubs! Again, nearly a billion people don’t have access to clean water.
And then there’s the energy and fuel that is required for the production, distribution, cooking and storage of the wasted food. It accounts for about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions! This is at a time when we are desperately trying to find alternative energy sources that emit less CO2.
Food waste is a global issue and in order to solve it a radical change in the way we think about consumption is necessary.
Share recipes, waste less.
Food Waste in Switzerland on Wednesday the 24th of October
Our friends over at foodwaste.ch have published a paper on food waste in Switzerland in cooperation with WWF Switzerland.
Similar to the UK, they found that almost half of overall food waste comes from private households, making it by far the largest source of food waste.
They also found that developing countries too waste a lot of food, however, due to very different reasons. There, the majority of the waste occurs during the harvest and storage of crops, due to outdated technologies and infrastructure. Remarkably, the end consumers waste almost no food at all! Surely, if they can do that, we can too…
For more info on the topic, check out the foodwaste.ch blog.
More Recognition for Your Support on Saturday the 20th of October
We think you deserve a lot of credit for sharing your recipes to help people reduce food waste. Therefore, on each recipe page we have now emphasized the author’s name even more.
Your profile is also visible to other users now so that they’re able to see all the recipes you’ve shared on UseTheFood. Show people how much you care about food waste.
World Food Day 2012 on Tuesday the 16th of October
Today it’s World Food Day for the 33rd time! A day to remember that almost 1 billion people around the world still don’t have enough to eat. Hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. At the same time, we waste around 1.3 billion tonnes of food every year. In terms of calories, that could feed 3.5 billion people
Share your recipes to waste less together!
New Drop-Down Menu on Thursday the 6th of September
Check out our new Drop-Down Menu
To make navigation throughout the site more accessible, we’ve introduced a drop-down menu in the top right hand corner. It makes it even easier for you to get to your profile, your personal settings and even the invites you’ve earned by sharing recipes.
Spread the Cause on Monday the 3rd of September
For every recipe you share on UseTheFood, you’re now awarded an invite to send to a fellow foodie!
Help UseTheFood grow in the way you want.
Don’t have an account yet? Register for an account now on our beta request page.
Public Beta Release on Saturday the 1st of September
We’ve just moved out of private beta and into public beta!
From now on you will all be able to search for recipes by ingredients on UseTheFood in order to use up what’s left in your kitchens.
In order to share your recipes on UseTheFood and to help people reduce food waste, you can request an account and get going as soon as you’ve been invited.
We’ve naturally also added loads of small new improvements and features.
