The Problem
The UK throws away
good food every day.
Not scraps. Real, edible food that someone bought, brought home, and never got round to eating. Here's the scale of it, and why so much of it comes down to a simple thing: forgetting when we opened it.
Where it comes from
It's not the supermarkets. It's our kitchens.
Of the ~10 million tonnes of food wasted across the UK every year, homes account for 58%, more than farms, factories, shops and restaurants combined. The fix has to start on the kitchen counter.
The worst part
Most of it could have been eaten.
Nearly three-quarters of household food waste isn't peel or bones. It's food that was still perfectly good.
2.5M tonnes. Fresh fruit & veg is the single most-wasted food, and about 1.7M tonnes of it could have been eaten, worth around £4 billion a year.
Why it happens
We forget when we opened it.
of all avoidable food waste is simply food that wasn't used in time, worth around £5.6 billion a year.
It's the single biggest reason good food ends up in the bin. “Use within 3 days of opening” is useless if you can't remember which day that was, so to be safe it gets thrown out. Around 27% of UK homes are high food wasters.
The single biggest cause is food that was simply not used in time. The date on a packet assumes it is still sealed. Once you open it, nothing tells you anything at all.
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Sources: WRAP: UK Food Waste & Food Surplus: Key Facts (July 2025); household data 2022; WRAP: Household food & drink waste (a people focus).