Food waste accounts for 20% of all the waste at your local landfill. Up to 80% of that food waste is completely avoidable.
Did you know that almost 60% of fruit and vegetables are wasted, on their journey from field to fork?
Grains and cereals are almost as bad. In the UK, 20 million slices of bread are thrown away every single day. That accounts for a third of all food waste.
The food we waste has all been grown or reared at the beginning of its life. 1.4 billions hectares of land are used every year to produce food that we don’t even eat. Consider that one international rugby field is approximately one hectare in size, and you’ll understand why we’re all concerned.
Of course, not all food waste is caused by people throwing it away, uneaten from their fridges. Big companies have something to explain as well. The amount of food that is rejected by supermarkets as not up to scratch is absolutely shocking. Some shops have started selling ‘wonky veg’, which is a good step in the right direction, but really, it’s just not enough.
So what can we do as consumers? At Tops, we make sure to only buy as much as we need, with carefully thought out meals plans and shopping lists. We encourage our children to self-serve their meals, which reduces the amount of food that goes to waste as uneaten from their plates. A lot of our ingredients are grown at our nurseries in gardening club, which you can read about here.
However good our intentions, there is always a bit of left over food. Most of our nurseries have composters and wormeries to turn our leftovers into compost that we use in our gardens. A composter isn’t always suitable though, if you don’t have outdoor space for example.
For this, we have come up with a solution!
Tops Day Nurseries are welcoming FoodCyclers into our daily routine. A FoodCycler is a small, energy-efficient food recycler which sits on your counter. While a traditional composter can take up to 8 weeks to transform waste into fertiliser, the FoodCycler completes the process in less than a day. It uses as much energy as the average computer to transform food waste in to a nutrient-dense fertiliser that is proven to enhance the soil without attracting pests. It can even ‘compost’ items you that would struggle to degrade on your compost heap, such as bones.
We’re excited to be taking another step in our sustainability journey. You can read about some of the other green things we do here
