well... Simply, no, it can't. We need to know how the figures are arrived at. I imagine few people actually throw away a chicken at all, for example, so I assume there's some notional % of a chicken getting dumped by rather more people. At which point it all becomes very dubious. Do the bones count? The head? That tiny bit of dark meat you can never separate that nasty-looking vein from but would otherwise have eaten? How many are cooked by caterers and then not eaten coz the people catered to didn't fancy chicken that day? Are they counting chickens that were bred for food but never made it to a food product for some reason? In fact, how much of all this waste is from the catering industry and nothing much to do with _us_ at all? Are they counting as waste the stuff that goes to pigswill? The whole thing's rub, I reckon.
The article says they went through the bins of a couple of thousand volunteers (and presumably then scaled up). So I could well believe that it's purely non-commercial wastage they're talking about (even if I have trouble accepting the number they come up with).
Read the report! (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste.pdf) The methodology is set out on pages 12–18. In particular:
In total, 2715 householders were interviewed and several weeks later the waste from 2138 of them was collected. [...] All waste was bagged at the kerbside and given a unique identifying code. It was then taken to a sort site, often a local authority municipal waste site. During the food analysis stage, the team of sorters would go through the residual and food waste containers and extract any items of food that had been thrown away, including inedible food waste such as peelings, bones and cores. The food was categorised into one of 13 food groups (e.g. ‘meat and fish’; see Appendix A, Table A1) and assigned a food stage category (e.g. ‘fresh or raw’ or ‘home cooked or prepared’; see Appendix A, Table A2) prior to being weighed.
This approach seems exceptionally thorough to me and I really can't think of a better approach.
I assume there's some notional % of a chicken getting dumped
The waste was measured by weight and is given in the report in tonnes per annum. Someone (not the report’s authors, possibly the Independent journalist) has divided by 365 and some value for the average amount of flesh on a chicken to get a figure in chickens per day.
Do the bones count?
Answered on page 15:
The avoidability rating involved defining the food as one of the following:
avoidable food waste. The food has been thrown away because it is no longer wanted or has been allowed to go past its best. Examples include an apple or half a pack of cheese;
possibly avoidable food waste. This is food that some people will eat and others will not, or that can be eaten when prepared in one way but not in another; examples include bread crusts and potato skins; and
unavoidable food waste. This waste arises from food preparation and includes foods such as meat bones and hard vegetable or fruit peelings (e.g. melon rind); it also includes used teabags and coffee grinds.
How many are cooked by caterers and then not eaten coz the people catered to didn't fancy chicken that day?
None, because these chickens don’t end up in kerbside household waste.
Are they counting chickens that were bred for food but never made it to a food product for some reason?
No, they are not.
In fact, how much of all this waste is from the catering industry and nothing much to do with _us_ at all?
None of it; see above.
Are they counting as waste the stuff that goes to pigswill?
Kerbside waste collecton doesn't go to pigswill. So no, they are not counting that.
The whole thing's rub, I reckon.
At least have the decency to read the report before you lazily dismiss it!
Imagine how you would feel if you had spent weeks sorting through thousands of bags of household waste, carefully assigning each half-rotted piece of food waste to its proper category, only to have your work airily dismissed as "rub" by someone who hadn't bothered to read the report.
That's just under 1% of a chicken per person per day. So on average people each throw away enough bits of chicken to reconstitute one chicken every four months. Sounds a bit less surprising when you put it that way.
I skim-read the dead tree edition this lunchtime, and I think it said the study was done by examining people's rubbish, so catering waste wouldn't count towards it.
Except that we're all throwing away the bones, and only some of us are throwing away actual edible bits. Do they count 1.5 kilos of chicken bones as someone having thrown away a medium to large chicken? What else are we supposed to do with them?
And are they still counted as thrown out if they're composted? What if they're composted by the council (as in Cambridge) rather than by the person who would have otherwise eaten the chicken.
There's just not enough info.
Edit: Ah, I see Gareth has actually read the report and answered much of this.
“government researchers have established that most of the food waste is made up of completely untouched food products – whole chickens and chocolate gateaux that lie uneaten in cupboards and fridges before being discarded” suggests that the 1%/person/day model is not the explanation.
Obviously it's not proper, but there are an awful lot of chickens in the world, and the idea that every person discards 1/120 of a chicken each day doesn't seem entirely implausible.
Table 18 on page 27 of the report (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste.pdf) contains the following figures for avoidable chicken waste, in tonnes per annum:That’s 194 tonnes per day. The conversion to 500,000 chickens must therefore be based on an estimate of about 388g of usable meat on an average chicken. (Perhaps it was 400g and then the result was rounded to one significant figure.) This doesn’t seem absurd to me.
(I note that the figure for wasted chicken meat in terms of chickens per day does not come from WRAP’s report (which estimates the weight and cost of the waste) nor from their press release (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste-executive-summary.pdf), which only mentions “chicken portions”.)
If anything, that's a low estimate, as it doesn't include food thrown away by supermarkets. It's a surprising number but if you estimate that each of the 60m people in the UK eats half a chicken a week, that gives 4m chickens/day eaten. The "1/3 of food wasted" is a number I've heard before.
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ewx
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:43 pm (UTC)Simply, no, it can't.
We need to know how the figures are arrived at. I imagine few people actually throw away a chicken at all, for example, so I assume there's some notional % of a chicken getting dumped by rather more people. At which point it all becomes very dubious. Do the bones count? The head? That tiny bit of dark meat you can never separate that nasty-looking vein from but would otherwise have eaten? How many are cooked by caterers and then not eaten coz the people catered to didn't fancy chicken that day? Are they counting chickens that were bred for food but never made it to a food product for some reason? In fact, how much of all this waste is from the catering industry and nothing much to do with _us_ at all?
Are they counting as waste the stuff that goes to pigswill?
The whole thing's rub, I reckon.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:11 pm (UTC)Read the report! (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste.pdf) The methodology is set out on pages 12–18. In particular:This approach seems exceptionally thorough to me and I really can't think of a better approach.
I assume there's some notional % of a chicken getting dumped
The waste was measured by weight and is given in the report in tonnes per annum. Someone (not the report’s authors, possibly the Independent journalist) has divided by 365 and some value for the average amount of flesh on a chicken to get a figure in chickens per day.
Do the bones count?
Answered on page 15:
How many are cooked by caterers and then not eaten coz the people catered to didn't fancy chicken that day?
None, because these chickens don’t end up in kerbside household waste.
Are they counting chickens that were bred for food but never made it to a food product for some reason?
No, they are not.
In fact, how much of all this waste is from the catering industry and nothing much to do with _us_ at all?
None of it; see above.
Are they counting as waste the stuff that goes to pigswill?
Kerbside waste collecton doesn't go to pigswill. So no, they are not counting that.
The whole thing's rub, I reckon.
At least have the decency to read the report before you lazily dismiss it!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:27 pm (UTC)Imagine how you would feel if you had spent weeks sorting through thousands of bags of household waste, carefully assigning each half-rotted piece of food waste to its proper category, only to have your work airily dismissed as "rub" by someone who hadn't bothered to read the report.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:51 pm (UTC)I skim-read the dead tree edition this lunchtime, and I think it said the study was done by examining people's rubbish, so catering waste wouldn't count towards it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:13 pm (UTC)And are they still counted as thrown out if they're composted? What if they're composted by the council (as in Cambridge) rather than by the person who would have otherwise eaten the chicken.
There's just not enough info.
Edit: Ah, I see Gareth has actually read the report and answered much of this.
Today I threw away 1/4 of a pork pie.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 12:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:23 pm (UTC)It’s certainly the right order of magnitude.
Table 18 on page 27 of the report (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste.pdf) contains the following figures for avoidable chicken waste, in tonnes per annum:That’s 194 tonnes per day. The conversion to 500,000 chickens must therefore be based on an estimate of about 388g of usable meat on an average chicken. (Perhaps it was 400g and then the result was rounded to one significant figure.) This doesn’t seem absurd to me.
(I note that the figure for wasted chicken meat in terms of chickens per day does not come from WRAP’s report (which estimates the weight and cost of the waste) nor from their press release (http://wrap.s3.amazonaws.com/the-food-we-waste-executive-summary.pdf), which only mentions “chicken portions”.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-08 01:38 pm (UTC)Indeed, nor cafes, restaurants, canteens, caterers, sandwich shops, farms, markets, ...