As the Shropshire Star  launches its War on Waste campaign, ANDY RICHARDSON reveals the horrific amount of food that is being thrown away and what can be done about it.

The figures make for frightening reading: In the UK, food waste costs households £12 billion per year and local authorities £1 billion per year.

Our wasteful attitude to food causes 20 million tonnes of greenhouse-gas creating carbon dioxide – that’s the same as a quarter of all of the cars on UK roads.

As a nation, we waste more than 8.3 million tonnes of food – that’s more than the weight of the packaging that we dispose of – of which 5.3 million tonnes is avoidable, 1.5 million tonnes is possibly avoidable and 1.5 million tonnes could be composted.

Local councils aren’t standing idly by while we bin perfectly good food.

Officials from Telford & Wrekin Council and Shropshire Council have both been involved in a major campaign called Love Food Hate Waste, which aims to reduce the amount of food sent to landfill sites.

They’ve also launched food waste collections, so that an increasing proportion of left overs can be converted to compost or electricity.

And today the Shropshire Star launches its War On Waste campaign: a six-week drive that aims to stop residents, businesses and producers from throwing away food.

We’ll be providing recipes, organising competitions, offering expert advice and much more besides.

The campaign has already been backed by leading food expert Karen Davies, the chief executive of Heart of England Fine Foods, which promotes the county’s food producers.

She said: “We are wholeheartedly in favour of the Shropshire Star’s War on Waste campaign. We have been taking our own steps to work with producers to eliminate food waste.

“Throwing away food is not just a waste of money, it’s also harmful to the environment. At HEFF, we are committed to environmentally-responsible food production methods. Our new offices at the Shropshire Food Centre, in Shrewsbury, are very eco-friendly and the Shropshire Star’s campaign is doing all of the right things.”

Local councils are also in favour of the campaign and have already started to launch their own anti-food waste initiatives.

Last month, a new food waste trial started in Telford and Wrekin as part of a drive to help people recycle even more of their household waste.

The pilot scheme affects 5,500 properties in parts of Newport, Church Aston, Lilleshall, Donnington, Wrockwardine Wood, Oakengates, Trench and Wombridge, for an initial period of six months.

Kitchen caddy

Properties included in the trial have received two new containers – a kitchen caddy and an outdoor food waste container. Residents are being asked to put their leftover food and peelings direct into their kitchen caddy – including raw and cooked meat, fish and bones, raw and cooked fruit and vegetables, all dairy products such as cheese, eggs and eggshells, bread, cakes and pastries, rice, pasta and beans, uneaten food from your plates and dishes, tea bags and coffee grounds, and pet food.

Councillor Adrian Lawrence, Cabinet Member for Environment, says: “The introduction of a food waste recycling scheme will help to achieve the 60 per cent recycling target that residents wish us to reach and will also reduce waste going to landfill sites.

“At this stage it does mean another two containers but we are aware of the number of recycling bags and boxes that everyone in Telford and Wrekin use to recycle and we are currently looking to the future to see what improvements could be made to the service to make recycling easier.”

Joy Blizzard, at Shropshire Council, oversaw the authority’s Love Food Hate Waste initiative, says War On Waste is a great idea.

The waste initiatives officer, who is one of the top 10 most influential and inspirational people in the world of waste and recycling, believes it will save the planet, save residents money and help people to eat more healthily.

Ms Blizzard, from Shrewsbury, is chair of the national Local Authorities Recycling Advisory Committee, and represents the views of local authority waste professionals at government level.

She adds: “We all need to do what we can to eliminate food waste. We’ll be giving Shropshire Star readers plenty of tips over the next six weeks.”

• Have you got any War on Waste ideas to share with readers? E-mail arichardson@shropshirestar.co.uk