Kitchen Garden Forum

until recently our town council employed a man to look after the cemetry and other odd jobs arround the town. they have now made this 63 year old redundant and employed contractors to mow the cemetary... that is all they do nobody, is now removing the dead flowers from the graves, or unlocking the gate, or marking out the new graves for the gravediggers, or emptying the rubbish bins at the sports field... with the redundancy payment it will cost an extra 14k over the next 2 years. and the ex employee is employed 12 hours a week as a self employed contractor to mow grass verges arround the town

JB - this kind of nonsense is unbelievable, isn't it? What could be more sensible than composting surplus vegetable waste, wherever it comes from? And to think that our Council Taxes are funding the salaries of these people only makes it worse.

Johnboy

You will be pleased to know that for once I TOTALLY 100% AGREE WITH YOU!!!

Compo

HOORAH!!
JB.

Youve got to admit that he does have some common-sense ideas

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7492573.stm

There is one interesting phrase in there :

"That's why I am proposing that we take action to both increase the global supply of food and reduce unnecessary demand," he said.

Does it mean he is moving towards the only global environmental policy that will really work - population reduction?

I agree that the BOGOFs (Buy One, Get One Free) encourage many people to waste and I think supermarkets really need to address this issue. How on earth can people living alone eat their way through two bags of clementines, strawberries, etc quickly enough before they start to deteriorate and it's not always possible to freeze surplus purchases. Supermarkets should be forced to discount such offers and simply charge half price for one item. Perhaps if everybody went to the Customer Service Desk with their surplus "free" item and asked for a refund, supermarkets would get the message.

I think the BOGOF's are there for the benefit of people with larger families. I seldom buy items of perishable food under this type of scheme because it simply would go to waste. On the other hand there are things that I know my grandson will eat (almost everything) and if I am visiting them or coming to me that weekend I just might.
The figure of 4,000,000 tons is mentioned but we do not know what makes up that figure. If Supermarket waste is included ? Is market waste included? We simply do not know. It is one of these statistics that we blandly accept! I wonder if children are still allowed to ask for some waste greenstuff for their pet rabbit or would they have to have a licence to take it if it is classified as waste!
I still feel that a great lot of this problem is actually caused by over officialdom.
I bought some Stilton for Christmas which was well packaged and I admit to eating it at Easter and it was nothing short of magnificent and what is more I am still here to tell the tale. Chantal's Tim would have, by law, had to ditch it about a week after Christmas. What I really like are Camembert that are in the wooden box which are just going out of date then keep them until they are about to run out of the box then the full flavour can be experienced.
JB.

The dating of food was certainly inroduced to protect the public - if against nothing else, against unscrupulous retailers. However, I'm sure that in many cases a rather "super-safe" date is chosen.
Also I'm sure far too many people do not know the difference between "Use by" and "Best before" - some education on this might be a useful first step in avoiding food waste.
Like you Johnboy, we work on "Smell by" rather than "Sell by", especially with cheese, preferab ly waiting till it is "out of date".

Hi Alan,
With cheese, if you go to a Restaurant, you get a wonderfully fresh piece of cheese which in the case of some soft cheeses such as Camembert and Brie there is absolutely no taste whatsoever. People totally miss the finer point of the cheese.
If my Cheddar manages to grow a slight mold I simply pare off the mold and continue eating. Many people would dispatch that to the bin but think nothing of eating a blue cheese which is totally full of mold.
Certainly when a cheese has reached it useful end it will let you know. And how!
JB.

In this country we have a pig industry that is in desperate straits because of the cost of grain surely anyone with half a brain cell can see this could be a way of reducing the landfill by processing the waste food into pig feed.

PAULW wrote:In this country we have a pig industry that is in desperate straits because of the cost of grain surely anyone with half a brain cell can see this could be a way of reducing the landfill by processing the waste food into pig feed.

Unfortunately untreated food waste was linked to the devastating 2001 foot and mouth outbreak. So it's not as easy as all that Paul. See http://archive.thenorthernecho.co.uk/20 ... 76795.html

I think the supermarkets themselves are more guilty of throwing away more food than teh average household; and my pet hate is 'eating on the go'. The amount left in these take-away boxes and thrown in the street is unbelievable.
I live between to fish & chip shops, the amount that gets left outside my front garden between the two would feed an army.

Beryl.

pigs used to be fed waste food as swill, there were regs as to time and temp to process the stuff, as ever some people cut corners.
then the regs were altered to reduce the treatment temperature, which resulted in pigswill being blamed for disease outbreaks and subseqently banned.

Geoff wrote:There is one interesting phrase in there :

"That's why I am proposing that we take action to both increase the global supply of food and reduce unnecessary demand," he said.

Does it mean he is moving towards the only global environmental policy that will really work - population reduction?

One of the historically tried and tested methods of population reduction has been famine - and we seem to be moving rapidly in that direction.