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HALLOWEEN

I don’t recall any celebration of Halloween when I was a child in the 1940’s and 50’s, however it is now the third  biggest event after Xmas and Easter. A report  by the food company Knorr and the environmental charity Hubbub says “we grow some 10 million pumkins every year in the UK, of these, 8 million will be made into Halloween lanterns”. Guardian journalist Rebecca Smithers points out that this represents some 18,000 tonnes of perfectly edible pumpkin flesh which is going into the bin.

Tessa Tricks Head of food programmes at Hubbub says ‘this is part of the £15bn of food waste in UK every year. Food is wasted at every stage from farm to table. Ugly produce are left to rot. In grocery stores, workers reject blemished (but edible) fruits and vegetables. In our own homes, we ignore leftovers and throw out perishables before they've expired. Today, a third of the planet’s food goes to waste - which, according to the United Nations, ‘is enough to feed two billion people’.

The UN also adds ‘The nutrients in the food never return to the soil. The wasted food rots and produces methane gas’. It also wastes the water, gasoline, energy, labour, pesticides, land, and fertilisers used to grow it.

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