Do you recycle?

Its not the consumers fault that the producers/suppliers/retailers are too stupid/lazy to bother finding a way of selling us B grade produce. Send it to foodbanks or something.

Yeah - I said that to my brother who is a forecaster at Waitrose. He said that if the shelves are empty people go elsewhere so supermarkets always have to over stock. And of course if you offer a Grade A and B veg next to each other, people will always go for Grade A. It is a tough nut to crack. However we are all in part responsible. Blaming the other lot for your shopping decisions doesn't help anything.

I was pretty shocked at just how much food waste there is. Think about all those mis-shaped carrots or parsnips with a slight blemish. They get dumped before they even hit the supermarket shelf. Then there is all the stuff that hits the shelves but doesn't sell.

The problem is we consumers. We have all seen the bruised leftovers at the bottom of the box that no one wants to buy. But at the same time, if the supermarkets sold class B veg at half the price of class A, I would buy it. We have been working through quite a bit of carrot fly damaged carrots from the garden of late. Nothing wrong with them once you cut off the infected part and free to eat!

It's very difficult to recycle in the UK because there are very few recycle bins, compared to France and Germany where there are recycle bins at every corner - many buildings even have separate bins for plastic, cardboards and glass. In the UK, you sometimes have to walk half a mile with your bags... I understand those who don't bother.

Yeah - I said that to my brother who is a forecaster at Waitrose. He said that if the shelves are empty people go elsewhere so supermarkets always have to over stock. And of course if you offer a Grade A and B veg next to each other, people will always go for Grade A. It is a tough nut to crack. However we are all in part responsible. Blaming the other lot for your shopping decisions doesn't help anything.

I think that is changing though. We now have four bins at home. On the street it is a bit mixed. Certainly around Manchester Uni and Man Met there are lots of recycling bins and Man Met boasts that it recycles the most of all universities. I also noted that around the bay in Cardiff and city centre there were lots of recycle bins. I guess it comes down to where you are?

It's very difficult to recycle in the UK because there are very few recycle bins, compared to France and Germany where there are recycle bins at every corner - many buildings even have separate bins for plastic, cardboards and glass. In the UK, you sometimes have to walk half a mile with your bags... I understand those who don't bother.

What I have noticed in the UK is that, where the council have provided public bins on the streets (not the bins belonging to each property, but the litter bins you see on the streets) they are only for general waste. No recycling bins at all.

There should be bins for recycling as well as general litter bins.

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What I have noticed in the UK is that, where the council have provided public bins on the streets (not the bins belonging to each property, but the litter bins you see on the streets) they are only for general waste. No recycling bins at all.

There should be bins for recycling as well as general litter bins.

Also, something else that is relevant - certain materials that are not recyclable should no longer be made. Our local chip shop uses polystyrene trays - that's not recyclable! Use paper or cardboard trays instead. Same goes for traders that serve beverages in polystyrene cups. Why? Use paper or plastic instead.

Not if the grade B stock is cheaper. Then some people will go for one type and some the other.

Supermarkets should love that, its basically a form of price discrimination.

Put it next to the grade A produce, so that some customers go for it? But that likely doesn't make commercial sense. It will obviously sell at a lower margin than the grade A produce, and the cost of purchasing and then wasting the grade B produce apparently isn't enough to offset that. Perhaps they could put it up at a price at which some would sell at an acceptable margin, but then they might be left with a load of waste anyway, and they'd be using shelf-space unproductively.

I don't know the figures exactly, but, in short, if it were in supermarkets' commercial interest to sell it, the likelihood is that they would be doing it. And if they give it to food banks, they'll risk detracting from the demand for their grade A produce, without getting anything in return. That being the case, if you want to stop waste, you'll probably have to legislate for it.

Maybe the problem is at some other stage in the supply chain, but the point remains that if there were a way to make money by using up all the lower standard stuff, someone would have found a way to do it.

The problem here is that the "Grade-B" produce is essentially mutated. There's a recent paper showing that eating mutated food changes your own DNA. The aversion to oddly shaped produce is not irrational aesthetic seeking, but like most instinctive reactions, has a sound basis.

In all my time eating organic food, I've never come across a mutant vegetable. Maybe a very large one, but that was it. It's only GM and mass produced food that degrades in such ways, indicating its lack of quality and unfitness for human consumption.

Maybe the problem is at some other stage in the supply chain, but the point remains that if there were a way to make money by using up all the lower standard stuff, someone would have found a way to do it.

In France some supermarkets put javel water on the food they throw in their bins to prevent hobos from taking it.

That sums up just how defunct capitalism can be.