Liz Goodwin
Posted by
Liz Goodwin, Chief executive

Empowering, not nannying

23 April 2008

A unpeeled potato

Jeremy Clarkson has a brilliant knack of cutting through to the heart of a big issue in a no-nonsense and attention-grabbing way. So when I saw him describe WRAP as "sinister Government agency" in a newspaper column I immediately paid close attention.

He complained about WRAP's campaign to point out the vast amount of food we waste needlessly each year. His point was that telling people not to buy so much, waste so much or even leave food when you were full was the nanny state at its worst. We should each be trusted to take our own decisions.

I agree we should all take our own decisions and I certainly don't want the nanny state telling us what to do. But the campaign isn't like that at all. When we published our research showing the UK wastes 6.7m tonnes of food a year, there was a huge public reaction. People simply didn't realise how much was being wasted and asked for practical advice and tips on how to reduce their food waste.

That campaign has touched a nerve. Partly it is because food waste makes a significant contribution to global warning, through the energy which goes into producing and transporting it needlessly and the methane created when discarded food rots in the ground. However it is also because consumers see it as yet another icon of a throwaway society at a time when we are understanding the need to put greater value on our natural resources.

WRAP's role is to research resource issues such as food waste and recycling and make it easy for people to take action if they want to.

I believe the vast majority of us do.

Posted in:
|Climate change |Food |Fruit and Veg

4 comments

Comments

  • jt

    July 18 2008

    Good for you, we must stop wasting food, if people make mistakes, they need to be told what to do to correct them, there's nothing wrong with a bit of nannying for a good cause

  • Jimbo

    May 08 2008

    I also agree that we should make our own decisions and don't want a nanny state, yet at the same time this very thing has also led to this huge habit of wastage that we seem to have. So I applaud WRAP for bringing this to the public attention and hope you carry on doing so.

  • Abi

    May 08 2008

    It's certainly true that there’s no hard evidence to support the theory that climate change is caused by humans. However, there are a variety of reasons to become more "eco-friendly" that are not to do with climate change, e.g diminishing space to put our landfill waste, or the amount of water required to produce certain products in developing, drought-stricken countries (flowers & Coca-Cola are 2 major culprit, for example). Furthermore, there’s no hard evidence to suggest that we’re not responsible either, & I for one would far rather take precautions to reduce my carbon footprint now only to find out in 40 years that I was wrong & it was for nothing, than carry on as “normal” only to find out in 30/40-odd years that I was wrong and the planet has become uninhabitable for humans.

  • Adrian

    May 08 2008

    I still believe that climate change is natural, ok we may have a bit to do with it, but the climate have been changing on this earth since it began and it will keep changing even without us. It is not often I agree with Clarkson, but I think he have got a point, that we are becoming a nanny state. We are even being told what bulbs to use and in fact our government wants to make sure that we will do as we are told, by banning normal bulbs. I don't recycle, I use normal bulbs as they are far better than those Low energy rubbish things and I buy what food I like, when I like.

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