Society can be a truly peculiar thing. Many men and women have strived to make sense of the madness in vain. It seems that in the transition from man to society, a great deal of common sense gets lost along the way. Our treatment of food is strange to the point of infuriation, and how it ever got to the stage where an estimated three million tonnes of food, much of it perfectly fine for human consumption, is wasted every year in Britain, I do not know. I will not try to put that number into perspective because I don’t know how – I can’t quite fathom what three million tonnes of food looks like either.
A significant portion of this waste is down to food not meeting the high aesthetic standards we demand of it, or at least the standards supermarkets think we demand of it. Aside from the blame game, however, this emphasis on how fresh produce looks is absurd – most of the time you’re going to cut it up anyway. To dwell, fret and fuss over the size and shape of one’s pepper makes about as much sense as agonising over what kind of windows to have on a house you are set to demolish.
To the happiness of poverty and food campaigners everywhere, Sainsbury’s have recently announced their plans to relax its strict rules on the cosmetic appearance of fruit and vegetables after an exceptionally bad harvest – the worst in many decades. It is sad how it so often takes a negative event for positive change, but it seems we only learn when we have to. With supermarkets struggling to fill their shelves, they cannot afford to be picky. Prior to this, food deemed too ‘ugly’ would simply be rejected and then ploughed back into the fields. A procedure which I hope, when so many in the country, let alone in the world, go hungry, does not warrant further discussion for it’s senselessness to be clear.
I will concede that food which is set to be ploughed back into the fields is beyond salvation, there is not much one can do about that. But this is not the case for all food waste. Every day, across the country, all of the nation’s biggest supermarkets throw out vast quantities of more than edible food due either to health and safety laws, i.e. they are past their official sell-by date, or because the packaging is blemished and subsequently fails the supermarket’s high standards. Such food, most of the time at least, can be found quite easily in the bins behind the supermarket. If the bins are empty, it is probably because someone has beaten you to them.
The problem with this waste isn’t necessarily health and safety laws – expiry dates do have to exist, and as a rule should probably be on the safe side of things; what is frustrating is supermarkets’ compulsion to keep their shelves filled at all times, something which invariably leads to there being a huge, wasted, surplus. Here it must be said that supermarkets should not shoulder all blame for this reckless habit, rather, most food vendors, independent and corporate, are just as guilty. It is part of the business strategy that shelves are brimming. It is an appearance they wish to uphold based on the belief that, say, a pile of croissants looks far more seductive and enticing than a lonely two or three.
Fortunately there are certain groups and individuals like myself happy to counterweight the excesses of the food industry. Fareshare, for example, are a British charity nobly rescuing food destined for the landfill and then redistributing it for use in soup kitchens, food banks and the sort. The foods they receive are very often fresh and well within sell-by dates; why it would otherwise be heading for the landfill borders on insanity. Lobster bisque, Chinese black fungus, fresh kiwi fruits, these foods are fit for kings.
Given that Fareshare estimate they only handle a measly 0.1% of the UK’s food waste, the outlook is very bleak and depressing. Why, oh why, must the world be like this, I hear you say? I would love to say it doesn’t, that there is a magical fix, but in truth it is merely a by-product of our insatiable appetites for consumption. Alas, it seems, the world is full of wastemen. There is nothing to be done but drown our sorrows in those hateful hallowed bins of Waitrose; bins which contain all the riches of this world, and all its sin.