LONDON: One-third of food bought in British shops ends up in rubbish bins, new research revealed on Friday. Over-buying, wrong storage temperatures and fussy children were among the reasons people gave for throwing away 6.7 tons of food a year, the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), a government body funded by Defra, said.

Around half the food waste is edible, with the rest consisting of items such as peelings, bones and teabags. Wrap’s research – due to be published in full at the end of the month – found that food accounts for almost one-fifth (19pc) of domestic waste.

Cooked food is more likely to be thrown away than raw ingredients, while fresh fruit and vegetables, followed by bread and cakes, are the uncooked foods most commonly discarded.

A Wrap spokesman said typical households bought 15kg of food a week, putting around 5kg in household waste. The figure does not include food that is composted – something done regularly by 34 per cent of households.

“Our research has found that about half of the food we throw away could have been eaten,” Jennie Price, the Wrap chief executive, said. “There is a real opportunity here for us to both save some money and help the environment by making a few small changes.“The striking point which emerges from the research is that only 10 per cent of those asked realised they were throwing much food away.”

Wrap figures suggest that around 20 per cent of British climate change emissions are related to the production, processing, transportation and storage of food.

The main reasons for having excess food were that more was bought than needed, that fridges were too warm and that many products with a short shelf life were not eaten prior to their best before date.

Children refusing to eat food or pestering their parents to buy unwanted items while shopping further contributed to waste, Wrap said, along with informal or unplanned eating patterns.

Around one-third of shoppers do not check what food they need or take a list when buying produce, the spokesman added, leading to duplication. —Dawn/ The Guardian News Service