Every British household throws away £470 of perfectly good food each year – costing total of £13BILLION
The amount being binned is on the rise, with the average UK family throwing away £470 worth of food in 2015
FAMILIES are chucking away edible food worth £470 each year, which equates to a total of £13billion binned by households in the UK.
Campaigners say efforts to tackle waste have stalled, with 7.3million tons of food thrown away in 2015, compared with seven million tons in 2012.
Experts say 4.4million tons was “avoidable” waste that was edible at some point, such as bread that goes mouldy.
That compared to 4.2million tons in 2012. The rest was inedible scraps such as egg shells, tea bags and fruit skin.
The avoidable waste generated 19million tons of greenhouse gases.
According to the charity Waste & Resources Action Programme, preventing that pollution would be like removing one in four cars from roads.
Programme bosses say falling food prices and rising household incomes since 2014 have reduced the incentive to cut food waste.
Awareness campaigns, changes to use-by labels and higher prices saw food waste fall by 15 per cent between 2007 and 2012.
But the latest figures show the food industry has failed to meet a commitment to cut it in households by a further five per cent between 2012 and 2015.
The programme’s chief executive Marcus Gover said: “It is incredibly challenging to reduce waste and the stalling of progress shows just how difficult it is.”
The charity aims to reduce each person’s food waste by 20 per cent by 2025.
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