£5bn lunchbox food goes to landfill

A new study has found that the UK’s workforce spends £5.5 billion every year on shop bought lunches, whilst leaving food of almost as much value at home to rot.

Lunchbox foods such as ham, cheese, bread, fruit, crisps and yoghurts to the value of £5.06 billion are binned every year, according to results from the survey by Love Food Hate Waste.

Almost £1 billion worth of bread, £300 million worth of apples and £250 million worth of cheese is put in the bin instead of being eaten.

All this thrown away food means 2.1 million tonnes of possible packed lunch material ends up in landfill, including 530,000 tonnes of bread and 23,000 tonnes of sliced meat.

Researchers for the study found that 28% of Britain’s workforce never prepare a packed lunch at home, whilst 33% prepare lunch at home every day.

Food prices have been rising sharply in recent months, and this coupled with the oncoming recession means that people will be increasingly turning to home made lunches to save cash.

Love Food Hate Waste spokesperson Julia Falcon said workers could save up to £120 before Christmas if they making packed lunches today.

And given that so much food is thrown away, the packed lunches would technically be completely free.

Currently, only one in five workers use leftovers to make lunch.

Thirty seven percent of those surveyed said they would take their leftovers to lunch if they had more ideas for how to use them.