Prince Charles teams up with Jamie Oliver and Jimmy Doherty in war on food waste

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HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, writes in the Mirror about his war on food waste as he launches a new education program called ‘Food For The Future’ to help cut the ‘colossal amount of food we waste.’

Prince Charles tonight writes an exclusive op-ed for the Daily Mirror as he launches a new program to educate school children about how to prepare and cut back on wasting food to help save the planet.

The myth that transitioning to a sustainable lifestyle will mean more is one of the biggest.

I don’t deny that in some instances, there will be a price, but that is not always the case, and I have set out this week to try, in any way I can, to help the next generation see the helpful things we can all do at home that will not cost us anything. These things could actually save us money.

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On Thursday, my Foundation launched a new education program called “Food For The Future.” Students from secondary schools in central and southwest Scotland will be part of this pilot program. They will receive instruction from Jimmy Doherty and Jamie Oliver, a long-time friend and mentor. They will be able to experience the farming process and visit food-processing plants and learn how they can make healthy food from local ingredients.

The aim is to give them a comprehensive understanding of how our food system works and discover alternative approaches better for nature, people, and the planet.

I am so keen to make this happen because I am most concerned about young people’s futures.

We can help them see that what they eat can impact the health of the planet. This will make it easier for them to turn the tide and stop the climate disaster we are heading towards. They will be able to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 10% in a matter of minutes, and it won’t cost them anything.

All they need do is make informed choices to help cut the colossal amount of food we waste.

The annual number is currently at 1.3 million tonnes. Nearly half of that food ends up in the home. Food For The Future was founded to address this problem.

Hellmann’s conducted an enormous research project in Canada that involved a thousand families earmarking just one day a week as a “use-up day.”

They were asked to make meals using only what was already in their homes, otherwise destined for the bin. To their surprise, the families reduced the amount of food they threw away each week by a staggering – but hugely encouraging –one-third.

This suggests that Canada could save around 250,000 tonnes per year if every family did the same.

So imagine the impact in the U.K., which is home to nearly 30 million more people than Canada.

Farmers wouldn’t be under the same pressure to produce quite as much food from our struggling soils, the savings in greenhouse gas emissions would be substantial, but, best of all, there is the likelihood of big reductions in people’s weekly shopping bills.

We, the consumers, can do more if we are better informed and take the lead.

Long-term, I hope that supermarket shelves will have a kite symbol that shows how sustainably food products were produced.

But, in the meantime, a big step is to make sure the next generation is much more aware of better and often inexpensive ways of reducing the size of our footprint on the world.

At present, as many scientists have been trying to get across, we are breaching what they call “planetary boundaries” to the extent that we need for planet Earth to sustain the current and projected demands we make on this one precious planet.

For this reason, I have spent 40 years trying to show my grandchildren and children what we can do to prevent a world from being destroyed.

As you can see, I would be thrilled to see them actively contributing to a prosperous future and fully understanding how their health depends on the health of the planet.