I’m not sure if my mother ever uttered the exact words “Finish your dinner – there are children staving in Africa”, but the need to clear my plate (with the promise of dessert as an added incentive) was certainly drilled into me from an early age. And I’d wager that I’m far from alone – we’re all encouraged from the start to avoid food waste.

Many of us carry this into adulthood, and well over half of us in the UK claim to waste no food, or at least hardly any food at all. And yet, our bins tell a different story. Putrescibles – including both food and garden waste – are now the largest component of the domestic waste stream, accounting for 37 per cent of what we throw away (based on 2007 figures), compared to just 19.5 per cent in 1969 and a measly 7.1 per cent in 1879. All this wasted food, most of which could have been eaten, carries substantial environmental and financial implications and has, over the past few years, started to gain the attention it deserves. We are gradually learning about why all this waste is created, and also about what steps we can take to prevent it.

The amount of food wasted in the UK has recently dropped from 8.3 to 7.2 million tonnes a year (so now we’re left with enough to fill Wembley Stadium a mere nine times over instead of 10!), in large part thanks to the research and intervention of campaigns like WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste. In addition to addressing the food waste epidemic, Love Food Hate Waste is researching behaviours and attitudes that lead to food waste in the first place. Emma Marsh, who heads up the programme, explains: “The main issue that we’ve come across with people continuing to waste food is they just don’t realise that they waste it. If you look at the difference between what people say they waste and what they actually waste, there’s a huge divide – even more so than with other materials... people think that others can save up to £50 a month, but that they themselves can save less than £10 by avoiding food waste.” So, avoiding food waste remains off most people’s radar as they don’t think there’s any food waste to avoid.

Compounding the fact that we’re blissfully unaware of the food waste we produce are a number of factors that lead us to create it, according to Marsh: a lack of confidence (in cooking from scratch, for instance); nervousness about using leftovers; a tendency to buy a lot of fresh (read: perishable) food to encourage healthy eating; a penchant for overestimating so as to avoid running out; misconceptions about date labels (“People will throw food out at the earliest date they see”); and issues with storage – displaying fruit, for instance, when most fruit would last two weeks longer if stored in the fridge.

Sociologist David Evans, of the University of Manchester, has added to the growing body of food waste knowledge by “going behind closed doors” – spending eight months with 19 households in South Manchester. While he notes this sample is not statistically representative, his tactics of repeated in-depth interviews, accompanying participants on shopping trips, watching them cook and rummaging through their cupboards, fridges and freezers, allows for in-depth knowledge of household food provisioning.

Many of Evans’s findings support surveys done by WRAP and others, but he emphasises that food waste generation is not just a problem of the individual, but of social and material contexts – in other words, the fast pace of today’s everyday life.

Evans found that, though people may know how to cook from scratch and even use leftovers, domestic situations and family dynamics often prevent them from using these skills: “A lot of people have to take into account the tastes and preferences of other people in the households – fussy eaters, husbands who are suspicious of aubergines” and so on, he says, adding that children, and even pets, often eat special meals as a sign of devotion.

What’s more, Evans found that though people do tend to at least tacitly plan meals when going for routine shops (roughly every 7-10 days), “things come up that we can’t necessarily plan for – working late, parents’ evening, a fight with your girlfriend... There exists something of a tension between perishable foods and busy lives.” Add this to the fact that consumers often have very little control over the amounts of food they can purchase, and it’s very easy to wind up with waste. As Evans sums up: “Surplus results from households negotiating the complex and contradictory demands of everyday life.”

WRAP has also found that the amount and kind of food wasted depends heavily on demographics, with young people more likely to plan meals but also to be suckered in by supermarket offers, and older people less likely to plan, but more likely to portion correctly, for instance. “Someone who is over 60 would throw away a lot of peelings because they’re more likely to cook from scratch, whereas a student is more likely to throw away plate scrapings”, Marsh explains.

So, what’s to be done? Well, according to Marsh, people find reducing food waste quite an easy habit to master once they get into the swing of things and learn a few tricks. Environmental values, whilst important to the overall picture (avoidable food waste is associated with around 17 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent and a water footprint of 4.5 billion cubic metres), don’t necessarily impact on behaviour, WRAP has found: “The values element doesn’t correlate to behaviour change”, Marsh notes. “Actually getting people to take action is more effective... Just telling someone, ‘This is really bad for the environment’ is not going to change behaviour as quickly as saying, ‘Did you know that you can freeze cheese?’”

The ‘Love Food Champions’ project, initially trialled in partnership with the Women’s Institute, also proved highly successful. This programme saw knowledgeable and independent advocates promote the aims of Love Food Hate Waste at a grassroots level through giving practical tips and demonstrations. “On that particular project, they weighed their food before and after, and they actually managed to reduce the amount of food waste by half, so that was pretty incredible”, explains Marsh. Though the pilot has long ended, a number of local authorities and community and membership groups are carrying on this kind of intervention.

And, of course, the tough economic climate has its role to play, too. Based on WRAP’s latest estimates, the 7.2 million tonnes of household food waste in 2010 came with a price tag of nearly £12 billion. This cost virtually the same as the 8.3 million tonnes of food wasted in 2006/07 since food prices have inflated by 20 per cent in the intervening years, a fact that may have contributed to food waste reduction. Indeed, a recent survey carried out by Resource Futures on behalf of Friends of the Earth found that 83 per cent of respondents were becoming increasingly concerned about the cost of food and that 41 per cent of people claim to have reduced food waste because of this. Still, there is much work to be done on this front as the average UK household continues to buy and bin nearly £500 worth of food each year.

Evans adds that efforts to reduce household food waste “needn’t be limited to end-of-pipe interventions that carry the invocation for households to change their behaviour”. He suggests changes to food infrastructure – such as ensuring food is available in different quantities – would allow people to waste less. Likewise, he indicates, creating a social system through which food could be donated anonymously might stop it winding up in the bin.

And indeed, the way we get rid of all this surplus food has its impacts, as well as its rhymes and reasons, too. But tune in to the next issue for more on those (and in the meantime, make sure to finish all your veggies if you want any pudding!)...