Britain declares war on food waste

By Andrew Grice in Hokkaido, Japan
Monday, 7 July 2008
The Independent

The Government is to launch a campaign to stamp out Britain's waste food mountains as part of a global effort to curb spiralling food prices.

Supermarkets will be urged to drop "three for two" deals on food that encourage shoppers into bulk-buying more than they need, often leading to the surpluses being thrown away. The scandal of the vast mountains of food that are thrown away in Britain while other parts of the world starve is revealed in a Cabinet Office report today. It calls for a reduction in food waste: up to 40 per cent of groceries can be lost before they are consumed due to poor processing, storage and transport.

The report says UK households could save an average of £420 per year by not throwing away 4.1 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten.

Gordon Brown said he would make action to tackle the soaring cost of food a priority at the G8 summit starting today in Japan. "If we are to get food prices down, we must do more to deal with unnecessary demand, such as by all of us doing more to cut our food waste which is costing the average household in Britain around £8 per week," he told journalists on board the plane to the summit.

Mr Brown's determination to act follows The Independent's campaign to reduce waste through excessive packaging of food in supermarkets. The Government is to launch a major offensive to encourage supermarkets, restaurants, schools and all public sector bodies as well as householders to try to cut down dramatically on the amount of food they throw away.

The key findings of the 10-month review are that:

*Global food prices have risen significantly in recent years due to a combination of poor harvests in some exporting countries; higher costs for energy, fertiliser and transport; the diversion of some commodities to biofuel; and a long-term rise in demand for grain to feed a growing global population;

*The average UK household now devotes about 9 per cent of its expenditure to food, down from 16 per cent in 1984. But the poorest 10 per cent of households in the UK saw 15 per cent of their expenditure go on food in 2005-06; the richest 10 per cent just 7 per cent. And low-income households also spend proportionately more on staples such as milk, eggs and bread – products that have seen some of the biggest price rises in recent months;

*The increase in global food prices has hit developing countries the hardest, with food accounting for 50 to 80 per cent of household expenditure of the poorest. Price rises have contributed to social unrest in a number of countries.

At his first G8 summit as Prime Minister, Mr Brown will argue that the world's richest nations must do more to tackle the food price crisis. He will urge them to halt the decline in funding for agricultural projects in Africa, so the continent can boost farm production by 6 per cent a year.

He will call for a rethink over the use of biofuels so they are used more selectively. A separate study to be published by the Department for Transport today will admit they have contributed to the rise in food prices because land has been switched from food production to plant-derived alternatives to petrol and diesel.

Mr Brown hopes the G8 leaders can unblock the stalled world trade talks, which could collapse in the next few weeks.

The Cabinet Office study concludes that urgent action is needed on the supply of and demand for food. "The solution lies in raising the potential of food production in the developing world," it says. "If yields in Africa and elsewhere reached their potential, global food output would be much higher, far fewer people would go hungry and social instability around the world would decrease."

Oxfam accused G8 leaders of an "inadequate and hypocritical" response to the food crisis. Phil Bloomer, its spokesman, said: "World leaders ... must reiterate their promises to increase aid ... and make the necessary reforms including increasing investment in agriculture in poor countries."

The foam on the shore is really styrofoam

It tops list of junk washing up on coasts here. What's worse, it fragments badly and poses threat to marine life

By Shobana Kesava
Sep 16, 2007
The straits times

UNLIKE anywhere else in the world where cigarettes make up the bulk of junk collected on beaches, in Singapore it is styrofoam.

This material has been picked up in increasing amounts over the last five years, said Mr N. Sivasothi, coordinator of the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS).

The ICCS, an annual clean-up event, is the only concerted effort by volunteers here to analyse the kinds of trash that land up on local shores.

'Styrofoam is potentially much more damaging because it can fragment badly, whereas cigarette butts stay whole,' said Mr Sivasothi.

'The overwhelming problem we have is of plastic consumer items in the sea. As they break down, the chemicals that leach from them can be toxic.' Plastics are also a threat to birds, which are known to mistake them for food.

Preliminary data from this weekend's coastal clean-up saw styrofoam caking up the coastlines of both mangrove swamps and beaches.

While the most litter - all 29,801 pieces of it - was collected along the East Coast, Pulau Ubin Beach proved the dirtiest when factors such as the density of the litter collected by volunteers were factored in.

Mr Sivasothi attributed the problem at Ubin in part to dumping.

'There is a lot of heavy litter like oil drums and furniture parts. Offshore farms may have contributed to this load.'

The litter at the East Coast beaches was linked to heavy usage.

'Where there is recreation, there is rubbish,' he said.

skesava@sph.com.sg

Cleaners dump rubbish into Bukit Panjang canal

By Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia
29 August 2007

SINGAPORE: A viewer alerted Channel NewsAsia that cleaners of the Bukit Panjang canal, opposite Block 402, have been throwing the rubbish collected from one side of the canal to the other side.

By 9am every morning, residents said one of the cleaners would take a photo of the clean drain and send it to PUB, which is in charge of the canal.

But what is not shown is how the rubbish, which has not been properly disposed, will flow into the nearby reservoir.

The PUB said it would study the video footage first before making any comments.

Organic waste treatment plant needs better trash sorting

By Jeana Wong, Channel NewsAsia
12 June 2007 1941 hrs

SINGAPORE: Singapore's first organic waste treatment plant is set to be up and running by the end of this year.

The plant - the first and largest of its kind in Asia - will turn food waste into power.

But the plant owner, IUT Global, says thus far its power generation capacity has not been the most efficient.

That is because it has been having trouble collecting the right kind of food waste.

Singapore-based IUT Global had hoped that it would make some headway with getting its food waste suppliers to sort out their trash properly since it broke ground at its facility in Tuas nearly two years ago by building an organic waste treatment plant.

"The big challenge is to actually collect what we want. Having a number of people, and even malls like Century Square signing up was not a problem because many of these people want to be seen to be green.

"We've quite a number of hotels as well, including the big hotels like Raffles (Hotel) and Shangri-La. But the current system has food waste all mixed in," says Edwin Khew, CEO, IUT Global.

IUT Global says it needs to collect the purest food or organic waste in order to be effective and profitable.

And it remains hopeful that its S$60 million plant can deliver the promise of transforming a quarter of Singapore's food waste into electricity and compost materials.

"We've just started doing the testing and commissioning. Food waste will be coming in and we'll be ramping up, and this will take time. So we're hopeful that we can get the full 300 tonnes to move forward. But more hopeful that we can get the 300 tonnes that we want and not 300 tonnes that's mixed in with other things," says Mr Khew.

Singapore throws away some 1,500 tonnes of food waste on a daily basis.

That makes up nearly one-tenth of Singapore's trash, which last year amounted to more than five million tonnes.

If successful, IUT Global's new plant will be able to turn food waste into enough electricity for itself and over 10,000 other industrial facilities. - CNA/yy

New Packaging Agreement aims to reduce waste

By Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia
05 June 2007

SINGAPORE: The National Environment Agency (NEA) feels it is time to take a harder look at reducing waste.

So it has teamed up with over 500 industry partners (companies from five industries) to cut down on the amount of packaging waste produced.

Singaporeans dispose of nearly 7,000 tonnes of solid waste everyday, according to 2006 figures.

Most of it comes from packaging.

According to the NEA, the volume of solid waste has increased by nearly six times in the last 30 years.

The NEA believes building more landfill sites and incinerator plants is not a long-term solution.

One way forward is to reduce the amount of packaging produced.

And the Packaging Agreement, which takes effect in July, is a positive step towards this.

It is based on the idea that those who make, sell or use products should be responsible for their environmental impact.

This is called product stewardship.

And industry players say they support the move which they feel comes at the right time.

"I think industry is ready, because a lot of us are exporting, and some of them are also facing problems with regulations on packaging in some other parts of the world," says Albert Lim, Chairman of the Packaging Council of Singapore.

So the information-sharing processes provided for in the agreement will allow them to better understand and comply with these regulations.

"Right now, with the cost of packaging going up so high, the freight costs going up so high, the logistics costs going up so high, they may want to cut back. But can the consumer accept? That is one big question mark," says Sunny Koh, Chairman, Food & Beverage Industry Group, Singapore Manufacturers' Federation.

"Now the only fear ... is whether the consumer can accept, or whether they will be seen as cutting corners."

But others believe Singaporeans will come round to the idea.

"The agreement also tries to drive more eco-friendly types of packaging, packaging that can be more easily recycled for example, or packaging that is derived from material that is sustainable in nature.

"So in a way you can have your elaborate packaging, you have to be a bit more innovative about how that packaging is designed and what it's made from," says Howard Shaw, Executive Director, Singapore Environment Council.

The Packaging Agreement lasts for five years, and will first target the Food and Beverage industry.

The NEA says this is because the level of recycling of F&B packaging waste is the lowest compared to say, the construction industry.

This is partly due to stricter regulations on food-safe packaging that limit recycling.

F&B packaging waste also tends to be contaminated by other waste, making it costly and difficult to recycle.

It is also voluntary.

"Voluntary agreements allow some scope to be flexible, because once you insist on legislation then what will happen is that it will become hard and fast, and costs will go up.

"What we want to do is for people to learn as we go along, what is the best way to adopt environmentally-friendly packaging design," says Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister, Environment and Water Resources.

Fast food chain KFC has done away with paper mats on its trays, an example cited by Dr Yaacob on how companies are cutting down on waste. - CNA/yy