Quarter of the food binned each year has not even been opened

HOUSEHOLDS are throwing away a million tons of untouched food each year, figures show.

This means around one quarter of our ‘avoidable’ food waste has not even been opened after it was bought.

Confusion over best-before labelling, ‘buy one get one free’ supermarket offers and the decline of basic cooking skills are all blamed for the ‘ quite staggering’ figures from by the government’s waste advisory body.

Experts also warn that we are victims of a culture in which we feel we haven’t provided properly for our family unless they leave some food on their plate.

The figures, compiled by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) from two studies involving almost 3,000 households around the UK, show that Britons throw away 7million tons of food waste a year.

While some of this, such as bones, shells and tea bags, is unavoidable, some 4.2million tons is ‘avoidable waste’ – food that could have been eaten. This is enough to provide six

‘Lost sense of the value of food’

meals a week for the average family – and save them £700 a year.

Shockingly, a quarter of this needless waste is thrown away whole or in unopened packaging.

Potatoes make up almost a quarter of this untouched food waste, with some 230,000 tons going straight in the bin.

Salads in unopened bags and other fresh vegetables account for 260,000 tons and unwrapped and whole and unwrapped fresh fruit some 240,000 tons.

Some 10,000 tons of apples, 46,000 tons of carrots and one in every ten bananas are thrown away untouched.

The research also shows that more than 60 per cent of the tomatoes and mushrooms that are binned are still whole.

The report comes after a study by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers last year concluded that up to half of the food we buy from supermarkets goes in the bin.

Experts at the institute said that with the shift away from small shops to large- scale supermarkets, we have lost the sense of value of food.

And just last month, several EU countries blamed confusion over best-before dates for millions of tons of food waste a year.

Unlike use-by dates, which are used to denote the safety of meat and other foods that spoil quickly, best-before dates are usually just a mark of food quality such as flavour and texture.

But it means that dried pasta, flour, tinned goods and other products with a long shelf life are being binned unnecessarily. Wrap found that almost half of the 4.2million tons of avoidable waste was binned because it was ‘not used in time’. Other reasons given for binning food include people cooking too much.

Sue Baic, of the British Dietetic Association, said that she is ‘always amazed’ at how people struggle to turn leftovers into a meal.

Supermarket ‘buy one, get one free’ offers are also blamed as they tempt shoppers into buying more than they need.

Colin Brown, one of the authors of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 2013 report, said such offers lead to food being binned because people get fed-up of the monotony of eating the same thing.

Iain Gulland, Director of campaign group Zero Waste Scotland, said: ‘Throwing out food that hasn’t been touched is like throwing money straight in the bin. No one wants to waste good food and good money in that way.

‘Zero Waste Scotland, through our support for campaigns like Love Food Hate Waste, aims to help people to prevent food waste at home.’