We are wasting enough food every year to fill up 10,000 bin lorries because we are being tricked into buying more than we need.
Supermarket trolleys are loaded with large packs of items including cheese, bread, chicken and bacon products as it appears they are better value for money than the small ones.
According to food charity the Waste & Resources Action Programme, this encourages us to buy more than we may need and penalises those who choose to buy smaller packs.
But buying the right pack size for your household could prevent more than 200,000 tons of packaged perishable food being wasted – enough to fill Wimbledon’s main tennis court 16 times over.
Wrap’s investigation also found that many supermarkets charge us more per kilo for loose fruit and vegetables compared to the ones wrapped in environmentally damaging plastic.
In the worst case, researchers found that a 400g half-loaf of white bread costs 50p while a full-sized 800g loaf costs 55p – just 5p more for twice as much.
A 400g pack of cheddar cheese costs £2 – the equivalent of £5 per kilo. Meanwhile, a 220g pack of the same cheddar costs just 50p less, despite being nearly half the size in the same supermarket.
As a result, the smaller pack is 36 per cent more expensive per kilo than the large one.
British households bin more than 4.5 million tons of perfectly good food every year.
Cutting that much food waste from our homes would have the same impact on greenhouse gas emissions as taking two million cars off the road.
Single-person households waste 40% more per capita than other household types, in part because they do not buy appropriate pack sizes. Almost a third of UK homes – 7.9 million – are single occupancy, and that number is still expected to grow.
And if food waste was a country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China and the US.
Reducing the 9.5 million tons of food waste Britain produces overall each year is vital and we all have a part to play.
But supermarkets must also aim to end portion pack size rip-offs that mean it is cheaper to buy more food than we need.
