Metro Vancouver tackles food waste

Conservation in the kitchen

• What we are learning about food waste is shocking and what we must do to overcome the challenge seems daunting. But there are examples of success to emulate. Metro Vancouver’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign replicates a successful British campaign that has reduced household avoidable food waste by more than 20% since 2007. The goal is to reduce avoidable food and liquid waste in Metro Vancouver by 10% by 2018.

Do just one thing differently

The household habits with the greatest potential for reducing food and drink waste within Metro Vancouver homes are:

• meal planning/shopping
• portion sizing/leftovers

At first glance, these changes seem to demand a high level of commitment from people to adjust habits that may have been years in the making. And too much change can be overwhelming, leading to feelings of discouragement. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign offers stand-alone ideas and suggestions to reduce food waste – simple ideas anyone can adopt, linked to benefits they can appreciate, including a well-planned shopping list and the direct financial benefits of effective leftover storage tips. Residents discover the capacity to reduce waste without sacrificing time, money or their enjoyment of food. As awareness increases, people become more willing to adopt additional strategies and influence their households to do the same.

The metrics of food waste

How did we measure what we throw away? For one week in November of 2014, 500 households across the region recorded all of the food and liquids they disposed of and how they were disposing of it – food scrap bin, sink, garburator, garbage, toilet, backyard compost, other. Most importantly, they documented how much of that food and liquid waste was avoidable and why it was not eaten. Additionally, the contents of food scrap and garbage bins at 80 households were analyzed. This is what we learned:

Over half of the food and liquid we dispose of in our homes could have been consumed

All those bits of perfectly good food that we don’t use add up to over 100,000 tonnes of avoidable food waste every year in our region. To put that in perspective, every day in Metro Vancouver, we waste:

• 16,000 heads of lettuce
• 40,000 tomatoes
• 80,000 potatoes
• 32,000 loaves of bread
• 55,000 apples
• 70,000 cups of milk
• 30,000 eggs

This wasted food costs a typical Metro Vancouver household about $700 a year

Yet when we share this information, most people say it could not be happening within their homes. So the first challenge to reducing avoidable food waste is to make people aware it’s even happening. Only then can the work of changing behaviour begin.

Plenty of cooks in the kitchen

What makes this campaign unique is that we are crowdsourcing tips and solutions from people across Metro Vancouver. Ultimately, the goal is to facilitate a regional forum where residents and subject experts can share ideas and solutions that will help everyone love their food more and waste less.

As the campaign grows, additional resources will include “kitchen basics” to increase people’s culinary confidence. Useful online tools include menus with serving-adjustable ingredient lists, short and easy video food tips and ongoing expert guidance from thought leaders in our region.

How do people feel about their food?

In addition to quantifying food and liquid waste, we asked people about their attitudes toward food. Most people enjoy making new things to eat (75%), enjoy cooking and preparing food (73%) and feel they are creative enough to make meals using random ingredients (63%). Only 15% reported that food is just fuel to live.

Why people waste food

• Limited advance meal planning.
• A desire to have healthy food choices for the family.
• Cooking too much.
• Children not finishing meals.
• Perceiving cost of food and drink waste as minimal.
• Thinking it unnecessary to reduce food waste because of municipal food scrap collection programs.
• Not knowing how to reduce food waste.

Is the cost of food a factor?

Forty-one per cent of those surveyed indicated that the price of food meant they often didn’t buy the food they wanted. In the UK, saving money by reducing food waste gave consumers more money to spend on higher-quality ingredients.

Where does food waste go?

• Thirty percent of food waste was still thrown into the garbage, in part because food scrap collection was not yet available at many multi-family complexes.
• Residents of apartments and town homes that had food scrap collection used their food scrap bins as much as the residents in detached homes.
• Fifteen percent, or 30,000 tonnes of food, liquid and dairy waste, is disposed of down sinks or toilets.

Measuring success

Metro Vancouver will repeat the kitchen diary research, pre-diary survey and waste composition studies in 2018 to confirm we’ve met our 10 percent reduction target.

Website and resources

Start reducing your food waste today. Visit the Love Food Hate Waste website at www.lovefoodhatewaste.ca

Metro Vancouver tackles food waste

Households in the Metro Vancouver region generate about 190,000 tonnes of food waste every year. Over half of that, just over 100,000 tonnes, is food, liquid and dairy waste that could have been consumed. Reducing that waste is key to meeting Metro Vancouver’s waste diversion targets as well as our goal of a 10 per cent reduction in per capita waste by 2020. Food waste adds about $700 a year to each household’s grocery bill and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Costs not factored into our research include inputs like the water, electricity, fertilizer, soil degradation and labour to produce the food as well as the fuel to transport that food to global markets.
Metro Vancouver is a partnership of 21 municipalities, one Electoral Area and one Treaty First Nation that collaboratively plans for and delivers regional-scale services. Its core services are drinking water, wastewater treatment and solid waste management. Metro Vancouver also regulates air quality, plans for urban growth, manages a regional parks system and provides affordable housing.

Collaboration

Farm Folk – City Folk contributed their Foodprint Project materials to help us create our Shelf Life food storage resource. www.farmfolkcityfolk.ca

Canada Safeway is helping customers reduce food waste with in-store announcements that share our food storage tips. They are also sharing our tips with their Twitter and Facebook followers. www.safeway.com

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