BEATING BAGS WON’T WRAP UP OUR ILLS
By Charlotte Hofton – Friday, December 28, 2007 County Press
“AN INITIATIVE in Ventnor aims to free the town of plastic bags.
All very admirable. A plastic bag takes centuries to degrade and is a
potential litter nuisance. It is, however, very easy to salve our consciences by ditching the plastic bag rather than look at the far greater problems we inflict on the planet. Far better to do something about the stuff we cram inside the plastic bags, and which, in Ventnor at least, we may instead put into our eco-friendly replacements.”
“In Britain, 30-40 per cent of food is never eaten, and each of us throws away more than £400-worth annually, £20 billion overall, much of it flown in at vast ecological cost from abroad. And wasted food, generating methane, has far more impact on climate change than any plastic bag or packaging.”
“Ventnor should not be discouraged in their initiative. But let’s get things in proportion before we imagine we’re saving the planet.”
You can read ‘Beating Bags Won’t Wrap up Our Ills’ article in full here
Ms Hofton has made a lot of valid points in her article. We do know that Ventnor and the 90+ other towns/areas in the UK getting rid of plastic carrier bags is not going to save the planet but it is a start and it is far better than sitting on your bum doing nothing. It is a drop in the ocean, a drop that makes a ripple, a ripple that can grow.
Why are we throwing away 6.7 million tonnes of perfectly edible food every year?
Greed and ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offers at the big supermarkets – you go in to buy a 7kg bag of potatoes and find you get another pack free.
So you go home with 14kg of potatoes, two thirds of them probably go bad before you use them, potatoes should be stored in the dark, in a paper or fabric bag, never plastic, dirty potatoes store much better than washed ones. If they are ok you are usually stumped for ideas for using them. Plus your local greengrocer will have gone out of business due to you driving miles to buy your veg from a supermarket whose profits end up on the mainland.
BOGOF offers are useful for large families but how many times do these ‘free’ items end up in the bin? You get two packets of meat/sausages/bacon and forget to freeze one and find it lurking out of date at the back of the fridge? These BOGOF offers are not provided for you by the supermarkets out of the goodness of their hearts but the supplier. The grower is told that there will be a BOGOF offer on potatoes that week so he will only get paid for half of the crop that goes to the supermarket that week. If he does not like it tough, they can always cancel his contract.
With the rise of ready meals and takeaways it is getting to the stage where people don’t know how to cook from scratch and they think that it takes ages. They have lost the skills their Grannies had, to look at items that are rapidly becoming past it and know how to use them up. Gone are the days when a leg of lamb was roasted on Sunday, used on Monday to make cottage pie, the last of it would be used on Tuesday to make rissoles. Many will be daunted by the idea of making cottage pie (it would at least use up some of those potatoes) or rissoles but neither take long to make.
Never fear help is here in the form of a new website:
Love Food – hate waste
In the recipes section you can click on items of food that need using up and you are given a selection of recipes for that item
There are sections on food storage, advice on portion control so you know how much to cook, food dates explained, meal planner etc
The above views are wighthag’s alone and may not be the same as the rest of the Ventbag team.
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Green Ventnor 
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