Love Food Hate Waste is a new campaign, launched in Manchester today, to educate people about the impact of wasting food. And even better, Manchester Food and Drink Festival has announced that Love Food Hate Waste is its headline sponsor this year, leading the way with this yearâs theme of sustainability.
Not only is sustainability essential to look after our planet and its resources, but it is more than topical with the credit crunch affecting many peopleâs income and finances. More than £10 billion worth of food is thrown away every year in this country, filling scarce landfill space and releasing harmful gases into the environment.
Here is some food for thought (so to speak!)
- In the UK we throw around a third of the food we buy
- Of that 41% - or 4.1 million tonnes - could have been eaten
- The most common reason for this (61%) is that the food just wasnât used
- And 41% of this wasnât even touched
- On top of this, we cook too much food that is then wasted, an additional 1.6 million tonnes
All this waste means each household throws away £420 of food every year. Add this to the £1 billion it costs our local authorities to send these mounds of rubbish to landfill, it becomes very clear why this is an issue we all need to tackle.
Siobhan Hanley, director of Manchester Food and Drink Festival, said: âWeâre excited about our new partnership with Love Food Hate Waste, as it ties in so well with our major theme this year of sustainability and our own aims to become a more environmentally aware organisation. Love Food Hate Waste is an excellent campaign, and one which we think the people of Manchester will really get behind. Itâs very timely too, as reducing waste is synonymous with saving money, which will also form a key part of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival events this year.â?
The 2009 festival will take place from Thursday, October 1 until Monday, October 12, when the whole event will culminate with the now legendary MFDF Annual Gala Dinner and Awards, at The Palace Hotel.
MFDF wonât just be promoting sustainability at this yearâs festival, it is also implementing a sustainable event management model, in line with a new British Standard. The aim is for MFDF to become a flagship event in the field of environmental sustainability.
For more information:
www.foodanddrinkfestival.com