According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, one-third of the food had been wasted, causing a loss of $680 billion in developed countries and $310 billion in developing ones (Love Food Hate Waste). This is a significant authorized data provided by the FAO department. The food waste not only affected negatively to the environment but also the economy of every country. The campaign “Love Food Hate Waste” was held by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) with the purpose of reducing the food waste rate in recent decades. It gave advice and suggestions for people to make better use of their food instead of throwing it to the dustbin. With tips and lessons, the website wants to raise everyone’s awareness in preparing food and using the food in more effective ways. The campaign is semi-effective at using statistics, advice, and resources to help people to reduce their family’s food waste.
The target audience was said to be every family living in the United Kingdom as the rate of food waste had reached an alarming rate – 65% of food which was thrown away could be better used, reported by the campaign (Love Food Hate Waste). The campaign provides the statistic that up to 6.5 million tonnes of food was wasted every year in the UK, leading to a loss of $2136 per household per year – an extremely amount of money (Love Food Hate Waste). This fact alone attracted the attention of the audience immediately. This number will raise the curiosity of readers as it was significantly high. The wasted food was said to be “enough to fill 38 million wheelie bins or 90 Royal Albert Halls” (Love Food Hate Waste). This comparison caught the audience’s attention as it compared an abstract concept-food waste to a tangible one – the Royal Albert Hall which is one of the most gigantic and luxurious buildings in London (Royal Albert Hall).
Furthermore, the campaign compared the food waste as a country that could have the size just after China and the US (Love Food Hate Waste). The campaign appealed to our logic as it showed statistics and information about the rate of food waste and how the economy affected by the waste in the long run. The statistics they provided are clear and easy to understand which helps their target audience-housewives and people who cook for their family can get the idea and realize the significance of the problem.
However, the drawback of the campaign is that its website didn’t include how they got the data clearly and states the source from which they collected those information. These numbers seem to be quite subjective for me to believe since I need to make sure it was taken from an officially authorized organization. Furthermore, to report that 65% of food thrown could have been eaten, they have to determine a standard of food which can be eaten by human which is dependent on region and cultures (Love Food Hate Waste).
Besides, the website gave a lot of advice on how we can prepare a good healthy meal plan with well designed illustrated pictures and recipes. It started the “Love a list” challenge which the campaign will send a tool kit with meal planner and shopping list for free this called “Love a List Pack.”After a 4-week period, the family will know how much money they saved by following the instruction of the Love a List Pack. The campaign stated that the best way to reduce food waste is not to make it in the first place which is the preparation stage. The campaign records 3 families following the challenge and showed the result at the end of the period. This video is semi-effective as it just focuses on the good side of the planner instead of showing people how hard it is or the difficulty that the families faced. Using a challenge is great to propose a meaningful purpose but it is hard for every family to follow the full 4-week period. The campaign should firstly teach people to step by step to get used to how to prepare an efficient well-prepared meal.
Furthermore, to help families to continue to follow the challenge, it is essential that the campaign provides a variety of recipes with diversity in cultures. However, what the campaign provide was American food which is not always the best choice for Asian families. The difference in food culture will be made the challenge unsuitable for those families. Not only aiming for the audiences as housewives and people who works at the food business, but the campaign has also done a great job to attract the attention of young children. “Make Food Matter” is an activity which uses funny animation picture and expresses the idea of reducing food waste in the form of a story. It is a great way to help educate children at a young age to more concerned about the world around them, particularly here is a significant waste of food.
The campaign appealed to children’s minds by using the symptom of the Food Saver Superhero. As a lot of children want to become a superhero, the campaign wants to encourage them to save the food by saying that they could become a food superhero if they fight for the civilians-Food and against the villain-Dustbin. Using cute and funny images, it easily attracts the attention of children and helps educate them to be more grateful for the food they have. Furthermore, the campaign targets on reducing food waste in big hospitality companies. It reported that a median food business in the UK waste more than 100 kilograms of food every week which will not only cause the loss of food and money but also have a bad effect on the environment. Using data, the campaign wants to appeal to readers who’re having a food business working in the UK. It encourages more people to participate in the community as there are currently 150 hospitality businesses that have joined the project.
The campaign has a large recipe resource with detailed instructions, pictures, and videos. With diversity in options from course meals to deserts, it gave many tips on how we can make food from leftovers to reduce food waste which causes profit loss and bad environmental impact. The “What to do” lists 6 main resources for you to learn how to reduce the food waste from home. For example, “A to Z food” is a dictionary combines all the recipe and way to store the food for a long period of time. By sorting all the ingredients by alphabet letter, the list starts with Apple and go all the way to Yoghurt. For each ingredient, the campaign teaches us how to store the ingredients, how to keep it fresh and suggest some recipe with the ingredient. However, the recipe focuses on making simple and unhealthy food and most of them are western cuisines. It needs more time to develop the website with more Asian food since the Asian family occupies a large position in the community.
In conclusion, the campaign “Love Food Hate Waste” has semi-effectively achieves its purpose of reducing food waste in the UK. Using statistics, giving tips and lessons, and providing a great resources center, the campaign helps educate people on how to use their food and prepare food without waste which affects badly the environment and economy of the country. It has successfully encouraged people to use food more effectively. However, it needs to improve the collection of recipes and gives the readers the most authorized and correct information about any number given on the website.
Words cited:
- Love Food Hate Waste.WRAP 2018..https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/. Accessed Feb 4th, 2020.
- Royal Albert Hall. Royal Albert Hall 2020. https://www.royalalberthall.com/about-the-hall/the-charity/. Accessed Feb 4th, 2020
