Food waste

We hear a lot about food waste which contributes to release of carbon dioxide and methane during its natural decomposition. Most local authorities now collect food waste along with grass and hedge cuttings as part of their bin emptying service.

A lot of this will go to large scale industrial composting to produce methane which is fed into the national gas grid to power central heating boilers and gas cookers.

St Peters doesn’t produce a great deal of food waste, but even the small amount we do produce (mainly tea bags and coffee grounds) is now collected in a small bin in the kitchen and put in the brown bin for composting.

Another and usually larger source of food waste is from shops, cafes, restaurants and supermarkets. Packaged food that is approaching its sell by date is often donated to food banks by food producers or shops through organisations like His Church, FareShare and The Trussell Trust.

Fresh food that has a short shelf life or cooked food is more difficult to deal with. But App developers have set up a novel scheme to help to address this issue. If you have a smart phone, have a look at an App called TooGoodToGo. You put in your address and how far you are prepared to travel and then the App identifies shops, restaurants and takeaways near you that have food left over.

At various times of the day, they send out alerts and a collection time. People can then log in via the App and pay a small sum (usually £3 to £5) for a bag of food. In the Bury area the most frequent shops that offer food seem to be The Pound Bakery, Greggs, Costa, Morrisons café, Toby Carvery and Tim Horton.

The nearest shop to where we live that is part of this scheme is a branch of Greggs. The other day I did an experiment – well, once a scientist, always a scientist – and monitored their alerts. I turned up at the collection time and watched about three customers arrive at intervals and each collect a bag of food. The bag was a normal sized supermarket carrier bag which as far as I could see was about half full.

Clearly if you are vegan, lactose intolerant or celiac for example, this scheme may not work for you, but if you know of families who would appreciate a low-cost meal from time to time, then please tell them about it. It all helps to reduce food waste and use the resources our Heavenly Father has blessed us with.