Selfsufficientish.com

It was the throwing away of whole chickens that shocked me, too....but I guess when you can get 2 bare arsed, hock-burnt chucks for £5.00 people don't consider them a luxury anymore. We buy free-range, and the chicken gets cut up and frozen. It takes, whoo, about 3 minutes to cut up a chicken, FFS. Hardly a chore, is it?

Sadly, I do sometimes have to throw away fruit, but at least I can compost that. NOTHING else gets thrown away - if I can't make a casserole or a curry out of it, I make soup. Believe me, I have some weird and wonderful combinations, but all edible. Even by humans.

Interesting point about clothes, too....I am often the butt of jokes for not being 'fashionable'. But this 'throwaway' culture is seeping into everything - we are looking for a new barbeque (ours has eventually fallen to pieces after 6 years, not bad going as it doubles up as an unofficial fire-pit). We can't afford (or store or actually WANT) a massive gas one, the choice of 'normal' barbeques is shocking - they are all crap. We asked in a store why they were all so flimsy and was told 'Well, people buy a new one every year'. Whaaaaaaaaat????
So we're trying to get permission off our landlord to build one, using things we can get on Freecycle such as left-over bricks.

My father had an old galvanised wheelbarrow. He took the wheel off, propped that up on bricks, filled it with charcoal and added a grill from an old oven. Worked a treat and lasted for years.

The Riff-Raff Element wrote:My father had an old galvanised wheelbarrow. He took the wheel off, propped that up on bricks, filled it with charcoal and added a grill from an old oven. Worked a treat and lasted for years.

they also make a good fire-pit we had one at a friend's party, small piece of builders mesh over the fire and larger piece on top to cook on, it was superb

Poverty is a great cure for waste. Obviously we live in a country where a lot of people have too much money?

Nothing gets to its best before date here anyway. Haven't the cash to spare for that sort of thing.

citizentwiglet wrote: We asked in a store why they were all so flimsy and was told 'Well, people buy a new one every year'. Whaaaaaaaaat????

They make them flimsy so people HAVE to buy new ones every year. I had one that I used once, just once, and 3 days later it rusted to pieces.

I always wondered which genius decided that grills should be painted with flammable coatings that burn off the first time they're used.

The waste of food i ridiculous!

Personally, i do believe it is the ready meal culture, and the sterile culture.

Once a carrot goes to that dry stage, it perfect for soup, but not so perfect for cooking and eating normally. Most people don't see this.

Same as mould. Nik's and my views are pretty much the same - we grew up i n the same household!! If Jam or cheese has mould on it, cut it off!

I couldn't belive the woman saying that her child asks for weetabix every day and leaves most if it...so he obviously doesn't like it. Don't give it to him!!

The food waste collection system, with home food waste bins, shows the householder the amount wasted. This should encourage more efficient use of food. I buy everything fresh because of ZWP. This food seems to last longer than packaged stuff and so my waste, for composting, is minimal.

Not quite food wasted by the average household but I just saw this
http://www.john-west.ie/our-products/salmon.aspx
and was shocked by their proud statistic that they reject over 10 million cans of salmon per year (because they don't meet their quality standards). Am going to write and ask them what happens to that salmon.

No need to - they don't, of course, reject cans of salmon. They pick and choose amongst the whole of the salmon catch, and any that they don't buy is bought by salmon canners who do not choose to charge the premium prices of John West. As if, it seems, canned salmon (shades of Harold Wilson) is the only way to eat high-quality salmon. Well, I like canned salmon, but I also like fresh salmon and they're two very different animals. But that aside, there's no nutritional difference between a can of JW and a can of Arnold Snott's Best. Although I do like (and have one of) their bears (funniest ad I've seen in a long time).

Errmmm ... oh yes ... JW's buying policy has no bearing upon the welfare of salmon, or the use of that salmon.

MKG wrote:No need to - they don't, of course, reject cans of salmon. .

In which case, they shouldn't say that they do.

I'm assuming that, as you say, the answer is that they sell it to other companies, who in turn sell it on for cheaper prices.

I have emailed them, don't think it will do any harm for them to realise that not everybody admires a boast of this type.

Good for you, Moonwaves - I'm looking forward to the reply. You're absolutely right - they should not say what they do. I was merely making the point that there are other buyers around who aren't going to stand back and allow JW the pick of the market. But this promises to be interesting ...

Moonwaves wrote:Not quite food wasted by the average household but I just saw this
http://www.john-west.ie/our-products/salmon.aspx
and was shocked by their proud statistic that they reject over 10 million cans of salmon per year (because they don't meet their quality standards). Am going to write and ask them what happens to that salmon.

Tee hee, I have just done the same thing. I wonder if we'll get the same boilerplate reply? If they do chuck it away then I think they deserve to be ratted out to the press! Bet the website is changed by tomorrow.

Cheers Moonwaves.

Zoe

No reply or acknowledgement from John West as yet. Will wait another week (simply because I'm very busy this and next week) and if none received by then will follow up with them.

All waste cooked food which can't be used by us later, goes to the dogs, waste, uncooked veg goes to the rabbit and the resultant rabbit poo goes in the compost bins, anything which is beyond even the rabbit goes straight into the compost. Chicken bones, which can't be eaten by the dogs, are about the only thing which might find its way into our dustbin, but they're used to make stock first.

I abhor waste. There are times when the question "what are we having for dinner?" is answered with "left overs" Thing is, if the dish is not superb there is no problem but if it is you can never reproduce it.