FOOD WASTE

If you’re a stylist, photographer, or production company who regularly finds themselves working with food, you’ll know that waste at the end of a shoot can be a huge problem. As a studio with two kitchens, we often find ourselves hosting cookery programmes and commercial shoots that involve food products. Whilst it’s sometimes nice to have a tasty parcel to take home, if we’re honest, we see too much waste. We felt inspired to do some research into food waste and the findings were arresting to say the least.

We were alarmed to discover that over 1/3 of all food produced globally ends up in the bin and most of it never even reaches the shops. Whilst some British supermarkets are doing what they can to reduce the amount of produce that has to be destroyed, there is still a long way to go. It is estimated that an area larger than China and around 25% of the worlds fresh water supply is used to grow food that will never be eaten. The estimated value of food wasted globally is $1 trillion, and would weigh in at about 1.3 billion tonnes.

Whilst it’s clear that a global effort is required to make a dent in these staggering figures, the good news is, the internet is providing us with some viable options to help us do our bit in our everyday lives. Local company  ODDBOX have made it their mission to bring some of the produce rejected by the supermarkets to your table – they deliver ugly, wonky fruit and veg to Londoners at discounted prices. And thankfully, we also stumbled upon a solution to our own studio waste problem…  OLIO, who will collect any food waste at the end of the day for free and distribute it to the local community!

We think this is a brilliant idea and we encourage all of our clients working with food to consider using them by clicking HERE. If you need further convincing, here are some sobering facts about food wastage below:

• If food waste were a country it would be the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases (after China & the USA).
• In most developed countries, over half of all food waste takes place in the home.
• In the home food waste is worth £800 per year to the average UK family ($2,275 in the USA), which collectively adds up to £15 billion per year.
•  All the world’s nearly one billion hungry people could be fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.