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WASTE
Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

$29.95

In Waste, author Tristram Stuart asks why North America and Europe throw away 30% to 50% of their food. He claims that the fresh produce discarded by farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets, and consumers could feed the millions of starving people in the world at least three times over. He argues that avoiding waste is the easiest remedy to a global food crisis.

Mr. Stuart has been a freelance writer for Indian newspapers, a project manager in Kosovo, and a critic of the food industry. He has made regular contributions to television documentaries, and radio and newspaper debates on the social and environmental aspects of food. His first book, The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India, was published in 2006.

“Stuart, a freegan and environmental campaigner, has based his book on painstaking research carried out over several years of firsthand experience of foraging in supermarket bins, as well as interviews with company executives and trawls through the meagre data provided by governments and businesses… Waste is certainly one of the most important environmental books to come out in years. But it is more than that. It is an indictment of our consumer culture that should make us all feel deeply ashamed. The scale of our food waste problem—and its effect on the developing world—revealed in this book will leave you shocked. And, the author hopes, demanding change.”— Fiona Harvey, Financial Times

“Stuart is surely right that ‘reducing food waste should become one of the highest priorities on the environmental agenda.’ It’s a no-brainer: good for the hungry (North America and Europe combined chuck out enough to feed the world’s hungry three times over), good for the environment (excess food production is directly linked to the destruction of the rainforest) and even good for business (‘where waste has been cut, profit margins soar’).”—Bee Wilson, The Sunday Times

“In Waste, Tristram Stuart shows how we could have much more food overnight simply by not tossing away so much of it. This simple concept ingeniously unites many food scandals that often do not get the attention they deserve: the mould that destroys a third or more of Third World harvests; the fish caught by accident that must be thrown back, dead, under rules intended to conserve stocks; the millions of tons of edible food wasted by modern food processing and ‘sell-by’ dates; even western squeamishness about eating ‘every part of the pig but the squeal.’”—Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist New Scientist •