The great salad shame

Just read this interesting article in the Observer, containing the shocking idea that in Britain we import twice as much salad as we actually eat. That's a horrendous and stupid amount of waste, the equivalent of half of what we import AND anything that we produce ourselves. It just made me do a genuine double take when I read it and I had to share!

The article also includes a part that links to the post I made the other day about professional kitchens and food waste. With regard to the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign:

...while British house-spouses have clearly mislaid the poker-work sign that said "Waste Not, Want Not", it [is] pretty obvious that they [are] not the chief villains. Wrap puts the total of food waste at 20m tonnes. Three times as much food is wasted by retailers, processors and manufacturers, including agriculture. But the easy option is to put the blame and the pressure on the consumer. Industry is a much trickier target.

My first reaction is that I hope thatthis information is not seen as a reason for people to think "oh well, so why should I care about my food waste?" and carry on binning stuff. But on the other hand, I do agree - why are these campaigns always directed at the household when there is so much to be done on a commercial and industrial basis? Switch off campaigns, recycle more, waste less food... these all apply to businesses and organisations just as much as to consumers. But they apply at the sort of scale where a bit of thinking and leadership could make massive differences to our overall impact on the environment. Are there similar schemes and campaigns at that level? Let's hear more about innovations and successes beyond the household scale, and let's fix good "green" behaviour into life everywhere, not just at home.