'No-one in the world needs a food waste bin. Just eat your damned dinner'
When future historians search the archives for the precise moment that the Conservative Party lost the plot entirely, the sheer number of Tory own goals will probably obscure the decision this week to encourage people to throw away food.
But that's the nub of their problem, right there. We throw away 12 million tons of food every year, three quarters of it is perfectly edible, and the government wants to use your taxes to make that EASIER.
Hundreds of people go to huge efforts, over years, to grow, rear, nurture, feed, harvest, slaughter, process, prepare, wash, chop, cook, package, transport and sell something without which all life on Earth would cease entirely, and it's now official government policy to just... throw it away.
What do you think your grandmother did with food waste? I'll tell you: nothing. Because THEY ATE IT ALL. Throwing food away because you don't like the crusts, or you can't be bothered, or you left it mouldering in the fridge too long is a sign of unbelievable, unutterable, selfishness and privilege. If you have a food waste bin already, that stink you can smell is the rotten aroma of a civilisation determined to destroy itself with ignorance and greed.
Won't anybody think of the chickens? (Getty Images/iStockphoto)You paid for it. You've paid to keep it chilled, or frozen, or to cook it. And now you're paying for someone to take it away, all because you don't care enough about the work, the animals sacrificed, or the small effort required to use it properly. If you need a food waste bin, you are everything that is wrong with the world.
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Most of what you'd toss in that bin could feed your pets, the neighbour's pets, your nearest flock of chickens or a compost heap. Every bit of vegetative matter has a use, and a shocking number of us throw away what's perfectly edible, but slightly imperfect - an apple with spots, a banana on the turn, cheese we couldn't be arsed to scrape.
More than a quarter of us throw away bread and bags of salad every month. We could have bought only what we needed, and eaten it in time, but no. We could have freshened stale buns in the oven, or made breadcrumbs, or offered it to the neighbour's rabbits. Stuff that! Let's toss it in a bin, someone will take it away, and we'll just go and buy something else to not eat.
According to Opinium, last autumn 5.6million Brits had gone without food so they could pay the bills. And most of what you throw away will be sent to rot in a landfill, creating methane which is a greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming - that's on top of all the energy, carbon and methane created by actually making your food in the first place.
WHOA someone's had beans (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)Perhaps you think the binman is recycling it? He rarely bothers. A grand total of 115 local councils send the food waste they collect to an anaerobic digester to make energy. That's 0.9% of all local councils in England: not so much peeing in the wind, as farting into a hurricane.
Your grandmother didn't toss the roast chicken carcass. She made soup out of it, and once the bones are boiled clean they can go in the usual bin without trouble. Banana skins, if she was lucky enough to have one, could be made into hair conditioner, chutney, meat substitute, chips, or to polish the silverware. Apple cores can be used for juice, jelly, pectin for jams, and softening salads can become stir-frys, pesto, or roasted snacks.
Or you could just do something else your granny did - only buy what you're going to eat, don't shop when you're hungry, and store it in such a way it lasts longer. Wrap lettuce in newspaper and keep it in a cool cupboard, not the fridge, add paper towel to a plastic bag of veg to absorb the moisture. Use your noggin and not your dumb-ass privilege, and you'll save money and do far more to save the planet.
The idea of a bin just to toss out food would be horrifying to most of the globe even today, and it would shock every Briton of just a generation or two ago. The only people it would never concern are the stinking rich, entitled minority, and as it's those people making current government policy, of course it's their big idea to pretend they're being eco-friendly and magnanimous by tossing the bones of our world over their shoulder and assuming someone else will clean it up.
But it makes about as much sense a diamond ring recycling point. Something that's taken ages to create - aeons if you want to count selective breeding, hunter-gatherers and land management - has been crafted with skill into something lovely, and then thrown aside like it's worthless.
Actually it's worse than that - food done right will keep you healthy, while diamonds merely take too many pounds off you. Neither can be replaced, and while diamonds can be reused by others, food has a limited lifespan. What's shocking is that, when we buy something that could be used maybe two or three times, we don't bother to use it even once.
That's like getting a new toy for Christmas and throwing it out on Boxing Day without unwrapping it. It's consumption gone mad, and the fact it's happening in a society that's simultaneously obese and malnourished is a clear sign that humanity in general and Britain in particular is not only eating itself to death, but the rest of the planet will be delighted when we get there.
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A sensible government would encourage better food management, better education, better packaging. It would encourage more waste being sent to energy production, more community food banks to share what's not needed. It might even listen to King Charles, who is celebrating his 75th birthday with a five-year project of food hubs using surplus food to make meals for those who need it. Why that's not official policy already I can't imagine; presumably, feeding peasants is something the Tories can't see the point of.
But the peasants can vote, these days. And some of them - though not nearly enough - know that 12 per cent of British children are in food poverty, that 80% of teachers have reported more children coming to school hungry with a significant impact on attention, attainment, and future income and job prospects, and that we simply cannot afford to keep treating this planet and what it produces with the same sneering disdain as the Tories do.
And every single one of us knows that the only thing that really needs to go in the bin is the sort of government that wants you to throw away everything you've bought and paid for.
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