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Love Food Hate Waste

A third of all the food we buy ends up being thrown away.

Love Food Hate Waste logoThat’s right, we throw away a third of the food we buy and what’s more, whilst some of this is teabags and fish bones, most is perfectly good food that could have been eaten – if only we had used it in time or not made too much. That’s why Waste Awareness Wales is promoting a new campaign - "Love Food Hate Waste / Hoffi Bwyd Casáu Gwastraff" to help reduce the amount of good food that is being thrown away by households across the country.

In Wales we throw away 330,000 tonnes of food each year. If this ends up in landfill it would contribute to climate change because it emits methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas. Not only are the environmental implications huge but the financial ones are too – in Wales we buy, and then waste, around £500 million on food that could have been eaten.


What’s the problem?We waste £400 million worth of food every year

  • 90% of us just don’t realise how much good food we throw out.

Why do we waste all this food?

The two main reasons why food is wasted are:
- We cook or prepare too much food
- We let it go past its "use by" date or we forget it and it goes off


That must be such a waste of money?

  • That’s right the financial implications are huge; in Wales we buy, and then waste, around £500 million every year on food that could have been eaten. That's £420 each per year.

Is there an environmental impact?

  • Producing, transporting and storing food uses a lot of energy water and packaging, which is wasted if the food gets food wastethrown away uneaten. If we stopped wasting all this food, we could prevent enough carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year that would equate to taking 1 in 5 cars off Welsh roads.
  • Most of the food thrown away ends up in landfill sites. This creates methane to be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a powerful green house gas and a significant contributor to climate change.

Tell me more…

  • Home composting is a great way to prevent unavoidable food waste such as peelings, cores and teabags ending up in landfill.
  • Many of us believe that packaging waste is a worse problem than food waste. In the UK there is 6.3 million tonnes of packaging waste and 6.7 million tonnes of food wasted.

Top tips on keeping food fresher for longer on next page