Nearly half of all fresh potatoes thrown away daily by UK households

Households bin a “staggering” 5.8 million potatoes every day in the UK costing the nation £230m a year, figures from waste advisory body WRAP have revealed. Up to 1.7 million tonnes of potatoes are bought in the UK each year, yet almost half – 46 per cent or around 730,000 tonnes – end up being thrown away in UK homes, according to the WRAP-run Love Food Hate Waste campaign. Around half of consumers throw potatoes away because they do not get around to using them in time, WRAP research said, helping to make spuds the second most wasted food in the UK behind bread. As such, with autumn marking the start of potato season, WRAP is pushing its ‘Save Our Spuds’ campaign to raise awareness of the costs and environmental impacts of food waste and provide households with tips and recipes to store and use potatoes instead of binning them. More