Does wasted food impact badly on the environment?
Yes. In the UK we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of food each year. Much of this ends up in landfill sites. This contributes to climate change in two ways: The rotting process of organics releases methane and CO2 into the air. These are understood to be big causes of climate change across the globe. UK landfill sites create around 3% of all the emissions of these gases. Producing, transporting and storing food uses a lot of energy, water and packaging. Each part of the process creates harmful climate change gases, for example lorries transporting goods from farms to supermarkets. It’s bad enough that we harm the environment to get food on our tables. It’s worse that we then waste the food itself.
