Talk:Food waste in the United Kingdom

Creation of the article

I created this article with the intent of providing extensive information solely on the United Kingdom and its management of food waste. The country is reacting critically and differently enough to warrant a seperate article from Food waste. For references on this subject and already existing content (some of which can be transferred), see Talk page of Food Waste. I will continue to update and improve this article and hope others can help. If you feel this article does not satisfy any required fields then please feel free to discuss them here and I will try to amend the problems. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 19:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Supermarket Food Waste

Why people throw away food and supermarkets Food waste into energy Sainsbury's food - energy Council (Nottingham) food - energy MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 18:04, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

http://www.rethinkrecycling.com/residents/throw-buy/materials-name/food-waste MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 19:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Lead

I'm not fabulous at doing leads for articles, so if someone could give the current one a 'once-over' and revise it, would be a great help. Not entirely certain whether there needs to be references for statements in this lead, but I've collected some anyhow. Newsnight (media coverage) MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Food waste in the United Kingdom/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

---

Very impressed with the quality of the article when it is submitted to GAN.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance:

   Check and ensure that units are following the conversion MoS guideline.

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Good work on finding quality references and adding detailed notes.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   All graphs and images are from Commons.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:29, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Passed criteria. Now a GA. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

MoS Unit Conversions

At the moment I have converted all units from Metric to Imperial, however do you think Megagrams is a confusing wording? Tonnes, the same measurement, is used in the tables and would be more recognisable to an audience. Should I replace megagrams with tonnes? MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 16:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you shouldn't converted the units from metric to imperial. You just need to add in the imperial conversion to the back of the metric unit (since UK doesn't use imperial system anymore). And yes, megagram is very very confusing. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by add the imperial conversion to the back of the metric unit? The UK does still use the imperial system loosely nowadays by the way; although it's popularity is declining it is still reasonably important. Agreed, megagrams seems terribly confusing (I didn't even know it existed...). MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 17:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, generally my impression is that UK has switched to metric units (so 50km/h instead of 20mi/h), so I thought this topic is related to UK and should use metric units. The formatting should be something like this "... produced a total of 1kg (2.2 pounds) of waste..." OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Miles are still present on all cars, road signs and in common usage in Britain. Feet and stone are still often used in height and weight too. But you are right, the UK has formally switched to the metric system. My only problem is with the tonne unit, because tonne/lb produces statistics like 1.48 x 10¹⁰lb and similar, which obviously can't be used. I'll follow your formatting and perhaps use tonne/ton for the larger quantities. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 20:15, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay I hope the latest revision is a bit better. I've removed any conversion from tonnes to other units, tonnes are the most popular unit in the UK and I should have realised that before. Still, at least I know what a Megagram is now.. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 20:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Historical perspective

The United Kingdom has existed since 1707, yet this article omits its first 300 years of existence entirely. Surely food waste didn't begin just two years ago in the UK? - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:30, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

No but food waste hasn't been a problem since very recently and it doesn't especially warrant writing about. I honestly don't see what the problem is with writing about a modern problem in a modern context. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 17:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't really expect you to go back to the 18th century, but let's not pretend the problem just materialised in 2007 or so -- there was no revolution in society or technology (vis-à-vis food) that made 2007 all that different from 2006, or 1996 (even 1986) for that matter. This sort of takes us back to the 1990s (cf. also provisions of the Environment Act 1995). This indicates the matter was the subject of scholarly attention in 1979. I'm sure there's more to be found. - Biruitorul ^Talk 18:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

No you are right, however I did want the initial focus of the article to be on the most recent developments (hence it's being featured so heavily in the media). I'll provide some historical context, so the sources are much appreciated. Any help adding them would be equally pleasing. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 18:19, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you think the article warrants a 'History' section to represent the rising issue of food waste and some of the milestones it has encountered (Gordon Brown at political summets talking about food waste) over the years? I would love to make use of some of the fantastic sources you've provided, particularly transfering the data from some of the early sources to draw a comparison between the most recent surveys. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 18:43, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, it seems the issue really came onto the agenda in 2007, but a good "background" section certainly wouldn't hurt -- as you can see, the problem had been growing for perhaps 30 years. Here is another interesting article that could even allow us to go back to the War and Rationing in the United Kingdom, if only to indicate (as the article does) that the culture surrounding food waste was once decidedly different. In sum: 2007-09 should comprise most of the focus, but we can reach further back to put this into context. - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

No I agree, it certainly wouldn't hurt the article; I was planning to expand the article in places such as Prevention (how retailers are preventing waste) and in others, but a "Background" section would be good also. Again, further thanks for the sources, I hope I can count on you to help me in applying them. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 21:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone think that the past should be connected to the present in the Background section? For example a mention of how today the WI supports the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign. I think that would be appreciated, but I'm not going to go ahead with it till I get some consensus. What is everyone's feelings on the subject? WI TodayMasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 10:16, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Unless someone objects I think I'm just going to go ahead and make this change. At the current rate it could take months to get a consensus and I really want to see this reach FA! MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 11:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

This is a reference for later, talking about the retail/manufacturing sector reducing food waste: Article. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

More references I shall use later: FOE Dirty Truths, Defra anaerobic digestion and Wales Public Sector Environment. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 09:27, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Incineration

As this article has been translated into Swedish, I happened to notice the claims about incineration. I have no idea how incineration could generate more CO2 emissions than any other waste treatment. Now matter how the biomass (in this case food) is digested, the exact same amount of (non-fossil) CO2 is generated. The source [1] only claims that incineration generates CO2, it does not explain how and it does not cite any sources. I think it is unsuitable as a source in an encyclopedia.

I propose that the claims about incineration are removed. Incineration is the preferred way of dealing with waste in most of Europe, even if it might not be as popular in the UK. It is a form of CO2-neutral bioenergy. --Ion-5 (talk) 18:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I've reworded and added to better reflect the issues raised in the debate on incineration, and included two new references from reputable sources in order to back these changes. As for the FOE source, I believe that it may not be important as a scientific source, but as a cultural source, which raises issues that other people feel strongly on, it is a valuable source and so should remain. Hope that clears things up. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 19:22, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

By the way, congratulations to you and others in translating the article into Swedish. Your English is excellent, at what age did you begin to learn? MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 19:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

It was fun to translate this article into Swedish, because it is such a wonderful article! Very well done work.

About the English; most Swedes starts to learn English really early, maybe when we are nine years old, and that may be the reason why there are a lot of almost bilingual Swedes.Tanzania (talk) 20:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Nine years old is early I agree, but I wish we focused more on languages here in the UK; we do not begin until about 11-12 years old! Good luck with the good article nomination, though I am sure how it works on Swedish Wikipedia. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 21:01, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the new version is good but I still don't feel that the FOE source can back up the last sentence, the comparsion to landfills. In general, I think the article uses too many newspaper articles and other sources that are not so authorative, but I guess good sources are hard to find available online.

I work as a scientist in an English-speaking environment, but I still dont think my English will ever be "excellent" :). --Ion-5 (talk) 13:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The article contains a lot of newspapers, but I don't think it is that easy to find scientific reports easily on the web, but I might be wrong. Has some books in the subject been released? They might be covering the article to some level maybe. Tanzania (talk) 23:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I now removed the last statement, the comparsion to landfills, since I dont think the source (FOE) was good enough. Such comparsions are always difficult, contain many factors and require good sources. I also removed the FOE article from a sentence above since I think the BBC article covers the fact that there is a movement against waste combustion well. --Ion-5 (talk) 07:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

More points

Under "impact", it says "The food supply chain accounts for a fifth of UK carbon emissions". It has two soruces, [2] one actually mention the supply chain while the other, [3] says "associated with food production, distribution and storage". Regardless, I find this very hard to believe. 20% is a lot and I would prefer some more authorative source on the matter. --Ion-5 (talk) 08:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

As would I; if you find one then please include it, sadly I couldn't when I searched. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 09:26, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

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Juxtaposition of rationing and waste

Good job, but I feel that references to rationing are not relevant in this context. Rationing is a means of allocating scarce resources, not reducing waste. While rationing may, indirectly, have reduced waste by limiting access of those who were likely to waste food because they could afford to buy more than they needed, this was never a stated aim of rationing, to the best of my knowledge. In the two world wars food was not going to be wasted because there was never enough to go round. Rationing to reduce waste is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Rationing. So I would urge a reconsideration of the first two paras of the History section. Roundtheworld (talk) 13:58, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

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