The Climate Solution Hiding in Your Kitchen

By Paul Johnstone

It’s easy to lose hope when it comes to climate change. A glance at The National Emergency Briefing’s video, which ZCH has been promoting, offers a sobering reflection on where we are going as a planet, with soaring carbon emissions and record increases in global temperatures.  

Despite many fine plans by most (but not all) governments, we still miss targets and face a dystopian future. We might be mistaken that action is all about government and legislation, and therefore out of our day-to-day control as individuals. But there is plenty that we can do ourselves. That doesn’t mean buying more solar panels and electric cars (important though these are), but there is one action that will make a big difference and is fully in our control as individuals and local communities; reducing food waste. 

According to the UN’s World Food Programme, a fifth of all food produced is wasted: That’s 900 million tonnes of food. What does 900 million tonnes of food look like? Well, the report helpfully tells us that if you filled that food waste in large 40-tonne trucks, the size of large articulated juggernauts, you would need 23 million trucks. Umm. And if 23 million trucks were parked bumper-to-bumper, the line would circle the earth seven times. More importantly, that’s enough food to make sure no one goes hungry in the world; enough to provide one billion meals a day for the year.  

The WHO estimate that around 800 million people face hunger and starvation each year, including 45 million children under 5 years, suffering from acute malnutrition. A further 2 billion people face food insecurity, in other words, their food supply is vulnerable, either from poor harvests or poverty (made worse by climate change). That’s a quarter of our entire human population, who have no access to safe, nutritious or sufficient food each year. 

Wasted food is a double whammy to the climate too. It’s been estimated that if you add all the energy and labour to grow the food which will be wasted, whether it’s meat or crops of wheat, maize, apples, everything, and add the impact of transport, refrigeration and storage, plus the energy used to dump the food, and gases given off as it decomposes, then this contributes to 10% of all global greenhouse emissions. Put another way, throwing away food equals five times the total emissions from all airplane flights in a year. And that’s before we get into the meat versus vegetarian debate. 

There are roles for shops, restaurants and businesses to reduce food waste, and these are helped by Community Fridge schemes where local supermarkets offer safe food near its sell-by date free of charge. These schemes are not Food Banks, although they can benefit too.

Here are some details of others local schemes:  

• Resurrected Bittes https://resurrectedbites.co.uk/ is a local food waste charity, whose "mission is to reduce food waste, loneliness and food poverty in our local community"  

• The Olio App – is a national scheme based on local sharing of food and other items – https://olioapp.com/en/ a good money-saver which also promotes giving between neighbours and within the community;  

• North Yorkshire Rotters https://nyrotters.co.uk/ who work with the council on reducing food waste and can speak at events: https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/bins-recycling-and-waste/reduce-reuse-and-recycle/north-yorkshire-rotters. 

  
  

These schemes ensure that food waste is reduced at the same time helping with the cost-of-living crisis.  

But fundamentally, reducing food waste is something that doesn’t require a lot of effort or left to governments to organise: It starts in our own homes and kitchens. Home is not only where the heart is, it’s where the future lies too.