This sure does look like a major problem which requires government intervention, doesn’t it – as many as 250 million meals a year are wasted in the United Kingdom. So, yup, let’s have a task force, a food waste tsar, let’s insist that we all do something about this unconscionable waste of Gaia’s precious resources.
And then we can wake up. There are some 65 million people in the country, each eating three meals a day. Actually, five if Public Health England and their obesity statistics are to be believed. There’re those 365 days in a normal year. That gives us 71 billion meals being served – 71,175,000,000 if we don’t, as we shouldn’t, believe PHE.
250 million of 71 billion is, well, it’s 0.35%. We around here, being adults, think that a human activity which operates with only 0.35% waste – compare this to the waste of effort in actually creating human life, multiple attempts at creating a pregnancy, each of which uses million upon million of those little sperm, only one of which wins in even any one year – is pretty good in its levels of efficiency. But modern politics isn’t obviously the adults in the room taking charge, is it?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Food waste chief to target ‘scandal’ of 250m binned UK meals[/perfectpullquote]We just don’t see an inefficiency rate of 0.35% as being a scandal.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Working with businesses and other stakeholders from across retail, manufacturing, hospitality and food services, he will also support government consultations on the introduction of mandatory food waste reduction targets and redistribution obligations. Elliot said: “While families all over the country struggle to put food on the table and children still go to school each day with empty stomachs, there continues to be an unforgivable amount of food waste, which is both morally deplorable and largely avoidable. “As a nation, we need to stop this excessive waste and ensure that surplus food finds its way to people in our society who need it most, and not let it get thrown away and go to landfill.” [/perfectpullquote]As, yes. We’re all entirely convinced that mandatory government targets are the way to increase efficiency, aren’t we?
Still, we have at least advanced. It used to be that the planning delusion insisted that government was the way to more efficient production, something that made us all vastly poorer. Today it’s that government is the way to more efficient consumption. Still a waste, still going to make us poorer, but less so.
“…We around here, being adults, think that a human activity which operates with only 0.35% waste….” I am tired of making this point, which I have to do continually on the subject of water… ITEMS NOT ‘USED’ IN A CLOSED CYCLE SYSTEM ARE NOT ‘WASTED’. In the case of water, that portion which goes in leaks goes back into the ground or the rivers, and participates in the hydrological cycle again. In the case of food, that portion that humans do not eat is consumed by other animals – often bacteria – and participates in the food chain which keeps… Read more »
I’m entirely convinced that mandatory government targets are the way to increase the number of prodnoses on the state teat.
You’ve sniffed out the purpose, haven’t you.