Monday 7 July 2008

Number crunching

Planned increase in fuel bills per household per week to pay for a "£100bn plan to boost renewable energy": £5.59

Amount of food wasted per household per week according to the Cabinet Office, which could be avoided to help "combat rising living costs": £8

Increase in weekly food bill over last year due to various factors = £15

Increase in food prices due to "bio fuels" targets = 75%*

Additional greenhouse gas emissions created by bio-fuels compared to fossil fuels = 50% to 70%

* It's not entirely clear if they mean that agricultural prices are 75% higher than what they would be in the absence of the bio-fuels nonsense; or whether 75% of the overall increase is due to the bio-fuels nonsense. Either way, this is not good.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Amount of food wasted per household per week" - how the hell would anyone know? - "according to the Cabinet Office" - ah, they've just made it up.

Mark Wadsworth said...

The £5.59 is made up as well. It's a gummint sponsored programme, so will the final cost be double that, treble that?

Anonymous said...

I have seen a figure, 40% I think, for fresh food wasted before it even makes it to the supermarket shelves. I'm surprised that with all the various rules such as the proverbial straight Eu cucumber that it is this low.

I remember when I was young that a lot of this retail waste food went to feed pigs, but this was made illegal for some reason or other.