The Eco Friendly Student

Food waste is one of the biggest environmental problems facing our society. First of all, let's start with some quick stats to put the problem into perspective: (Taken from the 2016-17 Food waste in England parliamentary report - https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmenvfru/429/429.pdf) The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that a third of food fit for human consumption is wasted each year  Globally this means we produce 1.3 billion tonnes of food waste 10 million tonnes of this waste comes from England alone 60% of UK yearly waste could be avoided  Our problems with food waste aren't simply down to people being frivolous and throwing away food for the sake of it. There is an element of that but, in reality, there are lots of challenges people face which contribute to unnecessary food waste - in combination with the fact many people aren't actually aware of how much food they throw out each week. I thought I’d...

My name is Bethany, I'm a student at the University of Southampton and this is my first blog post! I decided to start this blog after recently becoming interested in environmentalism and my personal impact. Two things I noticed when I began researching different ways I could be more 'eco-friendly'  Environmentalism isn't being made accessible to everyone - especially those on low-income There exists far too much snobbery and perfectionism around people trying help the environment What I mean by this is that the stereotype surrounding your average hippie trying to do 'zero waste' is both somewhat accurate AND extremely damaging to getting more people attracted to the movement.  Most products advertised as being available to assist people in living with less waste or consumption are far too expensive. Examples being anything from good quality reusable cups or speciality wholefoods to electric cars. And even if you can afford these items, there exist...