Sunday Independent: "The night I ate out ... of a bin"

Link to Sunday Independent

We throw out £17bn of food each year. Is it all inedible? Charlie Cooper joins the 'freegans' who live on little else.

"... Brown does not live in poverty – he lives in a small house in the suburbs of Wakefield in West Yorkshire. He never buys food, and lives entirely off what he finds in the bins of his local supermarkets – what he can't eat, he hands over to family and friends.

"Although the amount of good food thrown out by stores is shocking, it's nothing compared to what goes to waste at the manufacturing level. The Government estimates that, whereas 362,000 tonnes is goes into bins at store level, the figure for the manufacturing stage of the food chain is closer to 2.6 million tonnes. 

"The biggest source of food waste in the UK, however, is in the home. The Government estimates that 8.3 million tonnes is lost this way. Changing attitudes is at the heart of the Government's campaign, Love Food Hate Waste, which wants to get people making the most of ingredients – using food in imaginative ways rather than just throwing it away."