Food waste costing billions in the U.K.

Waste not, want not, goes the old saying, but it must've ended up in the landfill along with the 6.7 million tonnes of food chucked out in the U.K. each year, including packaged foods that have never been opened.

A new study says that stopping the waste of food in the country could avoid 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents from being emitted each year—the same as taking one in five cars off of U.K. roads.

The report from the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme, or WRAP, said the cost of all of this wasted food is $19.5 billion per year, $3.9 billion higher than previously estimated.

Liz Goodwin, chief executive of WRAP, said in a press conference that local government agencies have a big part to play in the solution to food waste.

"At WRAP we support separate food waste collections by local authorities. These capture the food waste and turn it into biofertilizer and renewable energy instead of sending it to landfill where it creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas."

She said that her group's research has shown that if they could capture 60 percent of household food waste and process it in this way they could generate enough renewable energy to provide the power needs of Cambridgeshire, an area of 580,000 people, for a whole year.

"It's worth reminding ourselves that for every tonne of food waste we avoid creating, we save four and a half tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent," said Goodwin.

The researchers found that more than half of the food thrown out is bought and left unused or untouched.

WRAP said each day 1.3 million unopened yogurt containers, 5,500 whole chickens and 440,000 ready meals are thrown away in the U.K.

Take a look at researchers sorting the waste here >>

According to the study, $2 billion worth of wasted food is still "in date." The group said it costs local authorities $2 billion to collect and dispose of all of the wasted food.

But there are answers, and WRAP said of the 6.7 million tonnes of food per year that's wasted, 4.1 million tonnes is avoidable.

The group said it funds applied research to develop new ways of maintaining the freshness of food for longer periods of time, and works with local authorities and the waste industry to increase resource efficiency through home composting, food waste collections and effective reprocessing of the food collected.

WRAP also said that, in collaboration with the reprocessing industry, it continues to invest in new composting and anaerobic digestion facilities, as well as develop standards for the resultant products.

Environment Minister Joan Ruddock said the effects of the wasted food on climate change go beyond the landfill.

"Before it is thrown away food has already left its carbon footprint—in its growing, processing, packaging, transportation, and refrigeration."

Ruddock said consumers need to buy less food and store things properly once they get home.

"WRAP's research shows us that 60 percent of us don't know what temperature to keep our fridges at."

The minister said that by keeping the fridge at 1 to 5 degrees Celsius, chilled food would stay fresher for longer.

The average fridge temperature in Europe is 6.6 degrees Celsius, according to Ruddock, who noted that by storing milk at this temperature instead of 5 degrees it loses up to a quarter of its shelf life.

Another easy solution goes back to that old saying.

"We can stop scraping over a million tonnes of food straight off our plates by cooking only what we can eat, better planning meals, and thinking about portion sizes."