To ask you all nicely if you didnt watch Hughs war on waste, to please please watch on catch up if you can.

[fruitandbarley]

I knew we were a wasteful country, and I'm not without blame myself, although do try to not throw things away that can be used, but this really was an eye opener, when there's people struggling to eat and struggling with bills, completely aside from the madness of throwing away millions of tons of perfectly good produce because someone at the supermarket thinks it's not good looking enough (despite proof that when rules were relaxed in times of shortage sales remained the same and nobody noticed), ruining people's livelihoods, this programme/series might actually make people change what they're doing.

Thanks for explaining that, OurBlanche.

The problem is everything has become so big and centralised - as a result waste has been upscaled massively too. We drive to big supermarkets once a week, fill a trolley with more than we need, and do the same thing again the week after. I'm guilty of it too, although I try not to be. I still throw the odd thing away, although I reduce waste by breaking up big packs of meat like mince, sausages etc into portions and freezing those individually.

It would be nice to see a return to more local shopping, with proper markets, greengrocers, butchers etc. But small scale local produce is expensive, even though they have reduced waste. Massive corps operate on a huge bulk scale, which allows them to offer cheap prices and then throw tonnes of food away. Money talks, and people will always go for the cheapest they can get.

one of the benefits of working in an agricultural college... all those history and business units I had to sit in on.

I think it must be knock-Morrissons season as they seem to be the only supermarket getting a grilling. You never seem to hear anything bad about Asda or Sainsburys, yet they all follow the same practices.

Morrisons were blockaded by farmers and everyone was saying they'd pay more for milk. Now they do a farmer's range of milk and cheese that is dearer and, guess what, nobody buys it.

As for bleaching the food bins, at the supermarket where DH worked they used to give away the leftovers, but they had a number of incidents and were told by either the council or higher up that they were no longer allowed to do it. If somebody takes gone-off food out of your bins and becomes seriously ill they will sue. So it's "safer" to make sure they can't.

The problem with the parsnips seemed to be over-supply. Does nobody remember the EU milk lake and butter mountain?

Supermarkets are a business, not a charity. Why do people expect so much from them? Would you expect M&S to donate all their end of season clothes to charity? Or PC World to give people the outdated electricals?

We were doing a weekly shop then throwing loads away because things like yogurts (and even boxed cakes) are so short-dated. That's where the problems started, with sell-by dates. When I was young eggs weren't dated and used to sit around for months. Now they have a use-by date on, so people throw them away.

We've solved our own food-waste problem by shopping more often but for only 1-2 days at a time. It's only do-able because we have 2 supermarkets and some cheap shops within 10 minutes walk.

But in all honesty, where do we actually LEARN to budget and cook?

A few weeks back there was a programme on the same channel about reducing food bills - most of the bill was reduced by budgeting and list making rather than downgrading products.

Recycling should be incentivised. My BIl always says that you can judge how wealthy a nation is by what is thrown away ... we really throw so much good stuff away.

Sites like Freecycle and Streetlife should just be common sense rather than having to advertise and make people think before heading to the local tip.

It is also about community - there are a few single, elderly ladies in my mum's town - they advertised and shop together in that a bag of potatoes or tomatoes halved - half the cost with the savings of buying bulk.

It is just about changing mindsets rather than campaigning against shoos that are accountable to their shareholders ..

My personal solution to be part of the problem is I avoid the supermarkets.

I buy my fruit and veg direct from the farmers, weekly or fortnightly through a box scheme.
I get milk and cheese delivered from my local dairy farm
and all the rest dried goods, canned, cleaning produce, loo roll, jars etc i buy in bulk through a Food Coop I set up with some friends and neighbours. We buy things in huge amounts and split them, saving money and packaging.
Meat and fish i get from local butchers, fishmongers and market.

Doing all this means that I spend a lot less on food than I used to when I shopped in the supermarket. and eat far better quality. and waste virtually nothing. and it's much more convenient! most of it gets delivered directly to my door for free! without packaging!

Like DrSeth i live in a flat and despite storing potatoes in the coolest darkest cupboard they only last a few weeks.

Just caught up.
Never understood why you can buy bags of misshapen biscuits and chocolates but not fruit and vegetables. I really don't care what shape a carrot is if it's getting chucked into a pot of soup.

I'd like to see a Mumsnet Support action calling the supermarkets to stop this silly "cosmetic" standards on veg containing.

It's totally immoral to throw so much perfectly good food away with consumers never to be given the chance to choose it or not.

Personally I'd buy mis-sharpen veg and day over perfect ones if it meant supporting our farmers.

Sorry continuing not containing

Oh and just to respond to a post up thread (gross simplification) where producers should diversify because the supermarkets only want a certain amount of parsnips.....

The issue here is that the supermarkets only want a certain amount of "perfect" parsnips.

If you assume out of an acre of land will produce enough to meet that demand, in reality you have to plant 3 acres of parsnips to get the yield of "perfect" veg. That's 2 acres of land you have to plough, sow, fertilise and harvest that has no commercial value at all. It's 2 acres of land that you can't use to diversify and if you did plant carrots or whatever, then the same wastage applies.

It's total f'ing madness....

a few weeks should be plenty unless you are buying spuds by the sackload.

I'd like to see a Mumsnet Support action calling the supermarkets to stop this silly "cosmetic" standards on veg containing.

But people don't buy the unevenly sized, crocked, nobbly ones... honestly if people can choose they pick the nice looking ones if aailable.

I would have thought the ugly ones could be used in commercial kitchens and factories in pre-prepared food.

Actually people DO buy mis-sharpen veg all over the world.

We are just (in)sanitised into what veg looks like.

Even in this country people buy veg boxes and eat proudly wonky veg grown in their garden.

If veg was sold "as is" people would soon get over this issue.

If you want to know how to waste less food at home (and save yourself lots of money!) check out www.lovefoodhatewaste.com If you want to know more about how to recycle /what to recycle where you live (and what to donate for re-use) check out www.recyclenow.com

very good point, yellow. Our home-grown veg sometimes needs canker cut off, holes cut out and the parsnips would have got top coverage on 'That's Life' (anyone old enough?)

they still taste wonderful.

Yes I would expect to see m&s do something worthwhile with their unsold clothing! I work for a large manufacturer and we supply the big supermarkets. Any product that is deemed not to meet their criteria, if it costs more to rework than dispose of, is sold for pennies to staff, as well as donated to charities and local pensioners.

All businesses have a corporate responsibility. The supermarkets alone are responsible for over packaging food - there was nothing wrong with buying it loose. But now we have a generation of people who are suspicious of food that doesn't come in cellophane and cardboard.

The parsnip farmers would need to grow far less crop if the supermarkets relaxed their rules on pretty fruit and veg. Farming is quite expensive, and they were having to spend the time and money over farming parsnips purely to allow for rejects and still meet the supermarket quota. It's fucking ridiculous.

And as for the "Farmer's milk and cheese" that is yet another way the supermarkets will justify their low, low prices.

By labelling it as a special product and making it seem more lifestyle and luxury they are deliberately ensuring that the average consumer will not buy it. Then they can show its poor sales and say "See, we told you people wouldn't pay more for milk!"

If they just increased the price of every pint they sold, people would pay, wouldn't notice, wouldn't complain as a) the increase would be less per pint than the 'special product' b) they don't want to be the first, on the off chance they lose a bit of profit for a while c) they set a precedent for other food stuffs d) they will lose their USP, the jingle at the end of their telly adverts.

For Mumsnetters wanting to waste less - check these sites out, there is lots of great info available to help us all waste less....

FOOD - How to waste less food at home (and save lots of money in process!) www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ - tips, recipes, what you can freeze, what date labels mean etc loads of great food info.

PACKAGING/STORING FOOD- How to store food to keep it at its best and save money - Fresher for Longer - www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/node/5859

RECYCLING - What you can recycle where you live, what happens to your recycling and where you can donate things for re-use locally www.recyclenow.com/ - A-Z of what can be recycled, recycling/re-use locator where you pop your postcode in and it tells you what to recycle for YOUR local bin/box collection and your nearest sites for bigger items or more unusual items like light bulbs etc

FURNITURE/ELECTRICALS - Find local charities and social enterprises to donate your furniture and electrical goods www.frn.org.uk/ (Furniture Re-use Network)

CLOTHES - - how to look after them, repair the, re-use them and get better use out of the ones you buy loveyourclothes.org.uk/

I didn't understand why the supermarket reject parsnips weren't sold to say heinz or other food manufacturers to make into tinned / fresh soup or ready meal style casseroles - surely the wonkiness of them wouldn't matter then as they'd be cut and pureed or processed. Anyone know? My DH thought it was because the arrangement with the farms doesn't allow for this..?

They may have a restrictive contract. It might be that there simply isn't the capacity for soup or cattle feed - remember every other farm will be trying to offload all sorts of other produce too.

Some will go off to farm shops, but only if the growers contract allows them to sell on whole veg for human consumption, as in the householder buys whole veg at point of sale.

And yes, lots of contracts are that tight. It protects the supermarket supply in years of poor yield, especially when a grower could get better returns from local sales for a proportion of his crop. Supermarkets protect their supply with 'good enough' and guaranteed prices. Which is how growers get locked into such contracts - they can forecast their income and pay off debts/replace machinery with some confidence.

As Blanche says the sheer volume of "waste" product means there is no market for it.

The farmers can't even give it away.

And to re-iterate they can't diversify into other crops as the volume of land needed to produce enough cosmetically approved veg prohibits this.

What's so insulting is as mentioned on the program, in years where the harvest was poor the supermarkets did reduce their cosmetic standards rather than import produce.

What happened? Nothing. Consumers didn't complain and sales remained steady. Thus proving what a farce this whole policy is.

The fact that some people accepted a free bag of randomly sized parsnips on camera proves nothing, and it's utterly fatuous of HFW to pretend that it's a 'clear message' to Morrisons in any way. He talks about supermarkets as though they're being despicably venal in making stocking choices based on what sells: but what does he expect? He gave parnsips away for nothing (and they probably go thrown away): is that what he's saying Morrisons should do? Or maybe the MD should stop being a pleb and just go and live in a River Cottage where his similarly unemployed mates can come over and help barbecue the elderflower-infused home-grown fucking courgettes every harvest?

!

It can't be that the veg isn't cosmetically acceptible it must be that the packaging machines can't process the different size veg or that the product has to look the same - like food served in restraunts have to look the same. Maybe going back to loose veg in boxes would be better? Then farmers wouldn't have produce so much in order to get a good grade of product. It is ludicrous.

I'm also not sure who would throw out those camelback water bottles? Or not recycle their clothes and old possessions or Facebook local them.

I also have no idea why people would waste so much food at home once they've bought it, I don't understand why labels and dates matter so much.

As someone with 6 people to feed and normally £40 a week to spend on a my weekly groceries and household items, this waste saddens me. Most nights we eat soup or I have to explain to the kids why we can't have certain foods, I cannot afford to waste food. I can afford basic good food but very few treat items - for us veggie haggis and a pack of biscuits is a luxury item.

I have no idea what the solution is but it is very sad situation for farmers and consumers. It is also very unfavourable for retailers. I'm glad there is a campaign, hopefully things will change.

I thought of this thread this morning when I opened a 'packet' of cherry tomatoes because the date on them was 30 October. They were perfectly fine (because I store them in the fridge) and will continue to be fine until they're all eaten!

Likewise the two rashers bacon which I bought from the butcher and had decanted into a Lock and Lock box a little while ago was still perfectly fine to cook and eat in the stuffed cheesey baked potatoes we had for supper (with some of the cherry tomatoes - also baked!).