The amount of good food going in the bin is enough to, listen to, this fill 23 million 40-tonne trucks every single year. Hey, put those trucks bumper to bumper, it’s enough to circle the earth seven times.

Why do we waste so much?

It’s to do with the infrastructure in our homes, it’s to do with the skills and the knowledge that we have, it’s to do with how time poor we are.

Historically, this is not a topic that has been a centrepiece of most food service and hospitality businesses, it’s really the elephant in the kitchen.

The first step in this process is to get people to actually recognize how much food they’re putting in the garbage.

In fact, the average household could save almost a thousand bucks a year by buying only the food they ate.

So, shopping with a list, making a plan, following recipes, using up leftovers. Go and turn your refrigerator down to five degrees or less and that will contribute massively to how much food you’re wasting at home.

Food service establishments closed, and they had all this extra food, and the supply chain that was built to deliver to them all of that food didn’t have a place to send it; and we saw milk being poured down the drain, and crops being tilled over, and I think it was dramatic and it caught the attention of consumers.

I don’t think there are many investments in a business scenario, particularly in the hospitality and food service sector, where you can demonstrate that level of return.

When you prevent food waste, you save money, you help the environment, that food’s available to people in the food system who need it.

• A tonne (noun): 1000 kilograms.
• Bumper to bumper (idiom): in a line, almost no space between vehicles.
• To be to do with (idiom): related to, connected to.
• Infrastructure (noun): systems, the structure and organisation of things.
• A centrepiece (noun): the most important part of something.
• Hospitality (noun): the business of providing food, drink, entertainment and related services to customers.
• The elephant in the room (idiom): an obvious problem people do not want to talk about.
• A buck (slang, noun): a dollar.
• To use up something (phrasal verb): to finish something, use all of something so nothing is left.
• Leftovers (noun): food remaining after a meal.
• To turn (something) down (phrasal verb): to reduce the volume, temperature, or intensity of something.
• Massively (adverb): extremely, a lot.
• An establishment (noun): a business or organisation, where they operate or work.
• A supply chain (noun): a system of people and things involved in moving a product from where it is made to the person who buys it.
• A crop (noun): a plant, fruit or vegetable grown on a farm in large amounts.
• To till over (phrasal verb): to prepare land and use for growing crops in the future.
• To catch the attention of someone (idiom): to make someone take notice, to become important so they pay attention.
• A scenario (noun): a setting or context.
• A sector (noun): an area of business.
• A return (noun): the profit from an investment, money made from something.

In this text, there are several examples of prepositions of place. We can use prepositions of place to say where things are. They go before nouns. There are 3 common prepositions of place:

• In: we use ‘in’ talk about something inside something else, something which goes in a bigger space.
• At: we use ‘at’ to talk about a specific place for an activity, it is used in many common phrases.
• On: we use ‘on’ to talk about location on a surface, or on various types of public transport.

Examples in the text:

• In the bin: you put food ‘inside’ the bin.
• In our homes: infrastructure is ‘inside’ our homes.
• In this process: the first step is part of (inside) the process.
• At home: the place the activity happens.
• In a business scenario: an investment is made ‘inside’, as part of, a setting or context.
• In a food system: food is part of, ‘inside’, a larger food system.

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/a1-a2-grammar/prepositions-place

#FoodWaste #Environment #Sustainability #Under5Minutes #AmericanEnglish #BritishEnglish #B1 #B2 #PrepositionsPlace

http://englishpodcastscollected.com/new/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BBC-News-How-can-we-solve-the-planets-food-waste-problem.pdf

http://englishpodcastscollected.com/new/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BBC-News-How-can-we-solve-the-planets-food-waste-problem.docx