Voices: Post-Christmas food waste is a scandal – but fault doesn’t just lie with supermarkets
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Christmas is the perfect storm for food waste, writes Felix Project CEO Charlotte Hill. But as tempting as all the treats, meats and trimmings may be, we all have a part to play in curbing this issue. In the UK, around 6.4 million tonnes of edible food is wasted each year – that is the equivalent of 15 billion meals, or enough to feed the entire UK population 3 meals a day for 11 weeks. But while food waste is a year-round issue, there’s something so frustrating about the way it spikes around Christmas.
First of all, there is the oversupply issue. Supermarkets want to give an impression of abundance – so they overstock, leading to mountains of unsold food come Boxing Day. What happens to all this food? A lot of it is simply thrown out. Or (if you are one of our fantastic supermarket partners) sent to food redistribution charities like The Felix Project.
From April next year, businesses in England will be forbidden from disposing of waste food via general waste streams, which we hope will have the added benefit of driving up surplus donation – but this is only one piece of the puzzle. The most sobering statistic in all this is that 60 per cent of food waste happens at home. It’s not just the supermarkets or the restaurants: it’s the leftovers we forget to freeze, the fruitcakes no one touches, and the veg wilting in the crisper.
Christmas exacerbates these bad habits; we don’t just cook too much – we often forget about the food we’ve stashed away. And yet, while our bins and supermarket shelves overflow, the stark reality is that millions of people in the UK are going hungry. At The Felix Project, we see it every day. Food banks are stretched thin. Community kitchens are struggling to meet demand. Families are having to choose between heating and eating, all while perfectly good food goes to waste.
