Currently, in Scotland, there are more than 600,000 tonnes of food waste that come directly from households each year.

These avoidable waste costs add up to a whopping £1.1 million per annum. An example of this would be fresh fruit and vegetables. Did you know that Scotland alone wastes around £70 million per year on fresh fruits that could have been used or avoided?

(Facts sourced directly from Greener Scotland website - https://www.greenerscotland.org/food-waste/about-food-waste/food-waste-facts#:~:text=Scottish%20households%20throw%20away%20600%2C000%20tonnes%20of%20food%20waste%20every%20year)

So how do we find a solution to this problem? It's easy enough to ask people to stop buying unnecessary food items but sometimes just a request is not enough to engage people to commit to real changes. that is where community waste avoidance schemes come into place.

By introducing a community garden and compost system we can take the annual household food waste and turn it into something useful for our communities and environments. Community gardens help promote the independence of growing fresh foods and avoid food wastage by only taking what we need and will use. The composting systems help reduce food waste by allowing us to take those products that would otherwise be thrown out and place them into reservoir banks where natural decomposition can occur without overfilling landfills or letting off environment damaging gasses such as methane which harms the environment. The compost created can then be used up by the communities in which it has been grown, therefore reducing the need for gardeners and other persons to buy peat-based composts which are known to damage the environment and local wildlife habitats. this also reduces the costs of taking up gardening and helps people from all backgrounds to be able to grow and eat healthy, fresh organic foods which they may not previously have access to.

Another part of the community waste avoidance schemes is the use and innovation of the community fridge. This is a large refrigerator set up within local communities to assist with food trade-offs and is open to the public 24/7 without restrictions. By taking products one will not use or which have passed their sell-by dates and putting them into the community fridge we can reduce our food wastage even further with the likes of meats and tinned goods etc which are unable to be composted generally. This also allows all persons within the community regardless of background to have access to food staples (and other necessities such as nappies, sanitary products, condoms, etc) without having to worry about the cost. Effectively this means that we may also be able to reduce child and adult food poverty in our local communities and lower the number of individuals and families having to rely on food banks to survive.

A few facts to end this petition with:

- Avoiding food waste in households within Scotland would benefit the environment as much as taking a fifth of cars off the roads would.
- Setting up community fridges that allow supermarkets and shops to deposit safe to eat foods that would otherwise be thrown out could save the UK's economy up to 3 billion pounds per year.
-60% of all peat compost bought in the UK are by gardening enthusiasts, by using community composting banks we can reduce the need for buying industrial peat-based composts and save thousands of wildlife habitats that rely on the unique environments of existing peat bogs.