Friday 2 June 2023
When food waste is recycled, it creates green energy and fertiliser. By using this green energy, it reduces our need to use fossil fuels. We've compiled some more of our favourite facts about food waste and food recycling!
Did you know?
- Avoiding food waste would benefit the environment as much as taking a quarter of cars off the road
- When food waste isn’t recycled, it ends up in landfill. Here, it decomposes and produces methane - a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide
- Recycling six tea bags generates enough energy to boil a kettle to make another cuppa!
- A single recycled banana peel can generate enough electricity to fully charge your smartphone twice
- One lorry load of food waste would be able to generate enough electricity to power 20,000 TVs for an hour
- With 100 tonnes of food waste per day, anaerobic digestion can generate enough energy to power 800 to 1,400 homes each year
- The UK's food waste emits 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHG) every year, which is 5.5% of our entire national GHG emissions, according to WRAP
- If food waste was a country, food waste would be the third highest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the USA and China
