Waste.

[leefer]

Been delivering alot to Marks and Sparks in my lorry and got to say ive had my eyes opened up on a few things.Parking onto the loading bays usually involves being close to the waste skips and in london that means close to alot of homeless people who eat very well.
Its amazing the amount of good food that gets put in the skips..you name it its in there which brings me onto the fact its never ever seperated from the packaging hence the people retrieving it for consumption.
It pisses me off as they lecture us on Plastic Bags etc yet they are filling our ground with tons of packaging every day as these skips go straight landfill.
I actually spoke to a worker who was just in the process of throwing food out including 6 packs of Dover Sole that retailed at £21 a pack and was at the end of the sell buy date.
One supermarket = at least one skip per month of food and packaging...so it dosnt take a genius to work out how much is binned in Britain each month.
Forgeting the moral issue on food and people dying worldwide the issue on packaging is out of order...these Supermarkets need to be looked at regarding waste...we all are making efforts so they should be with the profits they make....its not just food..milk and bottled water are thrown away in massive amounts...and the packaging on these are monstrous.
With resources getting low in oil and fuel i feel in years ahead we may have to go back to old style shopping which involved hardly any food waste and food and drink not packed like they are today.
I for one would welcome that.

[Colin Todd]

you make a good point leefer.

All the recent bollocks about plastic bags angered me, supermarkets are incredibly wastefull and hypocritical in this sense.

Its not just supermarkets though, a lot of products have an incredible ammount of pointless packaging 

[nevillew]

Valid observation Leefer - when are you holding a milk and Dover sole party then ?

Bottled water is one of the great scandals of our time in my opinion.

[Arnold.J.Rimmer]

on a similar note I think we should do what Ireland have done and ban plastic bags altogether. You see any landfill site and it's plastic bags everywhere. When i go to the supermarket then i just take my own bags.

[Colin Todd]

I'd much rather the govermnent went after the supermarkets and the level of packaging their products have, it would make a lot more difference.

[Don Rogers Shop]

Fuck it only plastic bags ffs leave them alone

[tans]

im sure i saw a programme on tv about someone who lived for a week on food that was from skips such as supermarkets and restaurants, they ate like a king!

[yeo]

We used to steal Apple Pies from the Cash and Carry Skip and have Pie fights with them.

When I was a kid obviously...

[flammableBen]

im sure i saw a programme on tv about someone who lived for a week on food that was from skips such as supermarkets and restaurants, they ate like a king!

it's one of those modern trendy things to do. Apparently you can live quite well. It's got a name and everything.

I want to have a pie fight with yeovil.

[Sussex]

This charity at least goes someway in helping to re-distribute food to the less fortunate. Not sure which retailers donate though, it's a couple of years since our journos went to help out for a morning before our Christmas do (I waited for them in the pub, obviously) but think Tesco and Asda were two of the bigger retailers who donated to them though.

Fare dos at Christmas

The Grocer, 26/08/2006

The door to a warehouse in Bermondsey opens and spread throughout the vast space are crates packed with a huge array of food and drink that people are busy loading into vans. Welcome to FareShare, where one man's left-overs are another man's lifeline.

FareShare is the only national food charity that redistributes fit-for-purpose food donated by retailers to those in need all over the country. It started off as the project of Crisis, the charity for the homeless, but was so successful that two years ago it became a charity in its own right.

Although it is only August, FareShare is currently in the throes of kickstarting its Christmas Meal Appeal. Between

11 and 23 December, FareShare's seven depots will deliver the ingredients for a Christmas dinner to soup kitchens and drop-in centres.

Alex Green, director of marketing, says: "We had 12,000 people to feed last Christmas but every day we feed that number. A lot of hostels close over Christmas so people end up with nowhere to go."

FareShare plans to feed at least one hot festive dinner to 20,000 people this Christmas. "Last Christmas was successful but it was a smaller pilot," says Green. "We started our food acquisition too late. Christmas starts in May in the food industry so this year we wanted to get to businesses earlier. We've learnt to get in sync with businesses in terms of Christmas planning.

"While throughout the year FareShare only takes surplus food from the food industry, for the Meal Appeal we need to guarantee that we have the right food in the right place at the right time."

This year FareShare isn't only looking for surplus food and is asking retailers to pledge contributions up front so that it can provide all the usual elements of a Christmas dinner.

The Meal Appeal caps a year of major growth for FareShare, with new routes springing up all over the country. It has revised its target of helping 300 organisations to 500 by the end of the year.

"We've come to the end of the first three-year strategy, which was to double the size of FareShare and recruit 100 new organisations to give food," Green says.

"After months of piloting, on 25 July we celebrated the launch of our new social enterprise, FareShare 1st, which is set up to provide a tailored socially and environmentally sound solution for surplus food."

The scheme offers a cheaper, more eco-friendly alternative to landfill sites by taking the surplus food from manufacturers and distributing what is edible through FareShare's network. FareShare will then dispose of the rest by green methods.

FareShare's biggest challenge is money, says Green. "Like any ­charity we're always running to find the next buck. Businesses quite often give us food and consider it a donation but it costs money to take it from A to B."

The charity is looking to raise £200,000 to help keep its vans running and able to deliver the food.

"The Christmas Meal Appeal this year will also be highlighting the fact that food poverty isn't just an issue at Christmas. FareShare's mission is to support communities to relieve food poverty 12 months of the year," Green says.

"The £200,000 is so that we can guarantee to deliver the food at Christmas time and provide our essential delivery service throughout the coming year."

[Lumps]

Of course if the supermarkets were to separate out all of the recyclable packaging from the food that was being disposed of as waste, and just chucked the food, some moaning bugger would post something on here eventually complaining that they were doing it deliberately so that people couldn't salvage the food.

[nevillew]

You mean like me taking an old television down to the dump, seeing the "there's a few quid for me" look on the attendant's face,having taken the back of the set off and trashed the insides first ?

[reeves4england]

When I worked in WHSmith a dustbin full of sandwiches was thrown out/returned to Sutherlands to be thrown out every night and money was claimed back on what was not sold. I guess this is why companies don't give it out, as it would probably stop them claiming money back, but it's so wrong that it happens

[Miss Angry]

As far as i am aware packaging is taken off food before being thrown out due to health n safety... if someone has taken it out of the bin, its out of date, they get i'll, it could still be the stores responsability. Someone is alot less likely to eat food with no packaging.

Co-op are taking measures with packaging etc, its rather annoying with my job as they are changing everything size so things wont fit where they are supposed to.

Also as a company are very aware of how much is being thrown out of the back door, just recently had a meeting on how we can all reduce the amount being thrown out... the answer is to reduce by alot more through out the day it goes out of date.... so if you pop in to your local you should find some bargains for 30 pence or so! They would much rather sell it at a stupidly reduced price than it be thrown away

[michael]

Do you work for Co-Op Miss Angry?

I really do like the re-branding that they have been doing over the last 2 years or so.