Blog
Spending £1000 on food which will end up in the bin is probably not a resolution for 2024, but latest WRAP research shows that the average UK household of four throws away food worth this eye watering sum, each year.
By Jackie Bailey, Senior Campaign Manager for Love Food Hate Waste
Just as humans lived through the Bronze and Iron Ages, so today we’re living in a time when one human innovation is synonymous with the era - the Plastics Age. Surveys of annual ocean sediments over decades show increases in plastics directly mirror the explosion in plastic manufacturing over the last seventy years, with microplastics in California doubling every 15 years since World War II. With plastics not only in sedimentary layers but in the air, the blood of fish and animals and even in human placentas, our plastics obsession is leaving a mark on the planet and its inhabitants.
World leaders, ministers, civil society groups, scientists and the private sector are travelling to Nairobi for the sixth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA), the world’s highest environmental decision-making body.
Millions will celebrate Valentine’s Day today, some of us rushing to the stores to buy bouquets of beautiful roses – many coming from the commercial flower farms dotting the shorelines of Lake Naivasha in Kenya.
The first Global Stocktake on progress towards delivering the targets of the Paris Agreement was unequivocal – we are not on track to deliver these goals. That means that keeping the average global temperature increase to no more than 1.5oC is far more challenging than ever. In fact, global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing.
So, what has COP28 done that could help bring us back on track?
We were certainly all running and talking in circles – positive circles that is - in October. People were marking Recycle Week with the Big Hunt for items that are being dumped in the black bin, but which could be recycled – such as shampoo bottles and plastic food trays – and it was Circular Economy Week in London. To top it all, we at WRAP launched with eBay the Circular Change Council addressing the mounds of discarded home furniture, 20% of which could have been reused. It was all yet another sign that we are on the cusp of the circular economy – championed by major brands as well as community initiatives - becoming mainstream. I am excited about this growing alternative to the old-fashioned economic thinking, offering a positive vision of change, and of the future. So, imagine my shock to discover that the circular economy has its own very old-fashioned, backward-looking prejudices!
Today is the fourth International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (IDAFLW). So, it seems only fitting to not only raise awareness of the massive global issue of food waste, but also to highlight some of the amazing action that WRAP and our international partners are taking to tackle consumer food waste around the world.
In November, UN member states, businesses, and NGOs will descend on Nairobi, Kenya for the next phase of negotiations that will shape the Global Plastics Treaty. But for the Treaty to have any teeth it must addresses the entire lifecycle of plastics. A comprehensive, circular economy approach based on the waste hierarchy and framed through the lens of SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production. With elimination, prevention and reuse prioritised.
This will require new radical thinking looking at whole systems change, and this is no more evident than in the world of reuse. How do we create a new system that is easy and convenient for people to embrace in their everyday lives.
This is where our work with UK Plastics Pact members is showing the way. Collaborative partnerships, in a precompetitive space, working together to solve one of the trickiest problems we face shifting to a circular economy for plastics.
Brown trout hunt the clear waters of the small River Nar. Rare and globally important, the Nar meanders through the downs and fenland of north-west Norfolk and is one of a number of rivers deemed a Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI), due to its unique transformation from chalk to fenland river. Farming stretches around, with over 75% of the catchment under arable and pig farming across the valley. Food production relies on clean water, we rely on these same catchments for drinking water, and nature needs them to maintain a rich biodiverse ecosystem. But the strain is showing as across the UK rivers are dying and the ecosystems they support are being compromised by intensive agriculture.