My carbon footprint: I’ve got the doggy bag blues

I dropped a proper social clanger over the weekend. I took the leftovers home on Sunday. We were in a country pub and, spotting the extra veg start to make its ominous way from table to kitchen to bin and, in all likelihood, on to landfill, I intervened. It was a criminal waste of a parsnip. Think of the possibilities. Free ones at that.

The other family we were with didn’t see it like that. I have never seen people look more like they wanted the floor to open up and swallow them all whole. They physically recoiled when I retrieved the metal boxes from the car – always go prepared – and started loading up the roasties. It isn’t the first time I’ve had that reaction, either.

Why is it that we can’t cope with owning the leftovers? Still? We’re missing a trick in more ways than one, that’s for sure, a trick plenty of other countries have been literally dining out on for years. The doggy bag isn’t just accepted in the US, for example, it’s a veritable institution – an absolute must given the scale of the average portion.

In fact, it’s only the eating-in bit that seems to be a psychological sticking point here in Blighty. Foodhub reckons half of the UK save their leftover takeaway food for another meal, which makes absolute and delicious sense. Who doesn’t wax lyrical about the joys of last night’s pizza for breakfast or, even better, the last bits of curry all jumbled together? (Don’t forget the thing about properly nuking rice, though.)

The good news is that we are increasingly aware of the issue of food waste as a nation. Globally, end-to-end food production, distribution and consumption (or not), known as the food system, is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN. The Foodhub data this week confirmed that more than 75 per cent of Brits do worry about the impact food waste is having on the environment.

We have become lords of the leftovers, too, thanks to Covid. A third of us recycle food more now than we did before lockdown, which is all great news. But there are a couple of enduring problems...

First, we don’t believe we waste much ourselves, personally. We genuinely believe that in our individual households we’re pretty good, which usually isn’t even close to true.

Now we also have to contend with the meteoric rise in demand for instantly available food, from two-hour grocery delivery services to every possible takeaway option delivered to our doors in less than an hour after we decided we simply had to have a Mongolian BBQ for tea.

Think of the amount of “just in case” food that sort of anything-could-happen model requires, and how much waste it generates when more people than expected opt for beans on toast instead. The same is true, for the most part, when we go out to eat.

Restaurants, pubs, bars and cafes have always tried to keep the amount of food that doesn’t make it to a table to a minimum. The best are true leftover wizards too, it just makes good economic sense. But they still have to have enough to feed the might-turn-ups.

Plus, once a meal has gone out and half of it has come back it has nowhere to go but the bin. Unless it is separated from other waste for compost – and what manic commercial kitchen has time for that – it’s likely to end up in landfill where it breaks down in anaerobic conditions to produce the especially potent greenhouse gas methane. As much as a third of all food waste produced in the hospitality industry is estimated to be “plate waste”.

There is a small-scale fight back going on. A handful of independent restaurants out there not only ask diners to book their tables several days in advance, for example, but to select their meals at the same time to reduce the amount of food produced, bought and prepared but never served. I’ve also heard tales of onsite aerobic digesters turning that valuable food energy into compost at the back of the occasional eco-minded restaurant.

And last year, Zero Waste Scotland ran a pilot scheme in which restaurants proactively offered doggy bags to customers. They reported an average 42 per cent reduction in food waste and their customers, two-fifths of whom would have been too shy to ask for the leftovers, apparently loved it.

So here, if you’ll allow me, is an appeal: that we embrace the doggy bag as a nation of food lovers and waste haters. That the next time you go out – for a cosy date night, a family feast or a luxuriant solo supper – and there are still morsels on that plate once you’ve eaten your fill, you ignore the withering looks and dive on those exciting extras.

Tomorrow’s breakfast has never looked so good.