How often does this happen? You open the fridge and find some ingredient you meant to use but didn’t get round to, and even though it’s still edible you think perhaps it’s just easier to throw it away. In the UK it’s estimated that an average household wastes about three meals a week, or 156 meals a year.

Household fridges are one thing. But across the food sector more than 1bn meals’ worth of easily accessible surplus food is wasted each year in the UK for the same reason: because it is easier to throw it away. That equates to 470,000 tonnes – enough to feed every child in the UK three meals a day for a month. When so many people are struggling to afford food, that is a staggering amount, and what’s even more shocking is that it is good quality and nutritious.

We hear a lot about grocery stores and restaurants throwing out perfectly edible food, but truthfully, they are a minor part of the problem. The vast majority of the food waste, about 850m meals, comes from farms, followed by food manufacturing facilities with 178m meals, another 71m come from the hospitality and food service sector, and finally the retail sector accounts for 12m meals.

And when I say easily accessible, I mean this is food we have the capacity to rescue and get to people. The organisation I head, Felix, is a food rescue charity.........

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