Good enough to eat: What happens to the mountain of Christmas treats left on shops' shelves?

Festive food and drink has filled supermarket shelves for weeks and no wonder – according to research published earlier this month, despite the recession Britons will spend £3bn on Christmas food this year. But at a time when food sales traditionally reach their annual peak so too does food waste – something food redistribution organisation FareShare is now working with food manufacturers and retailers to address.

"The problem with Christmas is that it's all about sales," FareShare chief executive Tony Lowe explains. "More food is wasted now than at any other time of year because productivity goes up, along with sales promotions and seasonal offers to get us all to buy more."

It's not just a question of buying more than we actually need, however. "Many products – either because they are fresh and seasonal, or because of Christmas-themed packaging – have only a short shelf life even if they are still fit to eat for another six months," he adds. "It's the time of year when marketing drives phenomenal waste."

At a time of heightened environmental concern, how best to reduce food waste – and, in particular, cut food waste at Christmas – is a pressing challenge for the food industry. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food are destroyed each year in the UK despite still being fit for human consumption for reasons such as being close to its best before date or damaged packaging – a fact highlighted by last week's Feeding the 5,000 event in London's Trafalgar Square.

"Seasonal periods throughout the year pose the food industry with a real challenge," says Julian Hunt, director of communications for the Food & Drinks Federation, whose members are responsible for two thirds of the UK's food production by value.

"While Christmas brings a predictable peak in sales, the challenge is to be left with as little Christmas-branded seasonal stock as possible when shops reopen on 27 December – which is why retailers discount so early – and none at all by 1 January, when shelf space is needed for the annual spike in consumer demand for salad, baking potatoes and low-fat yoghurts."

Clearing the shelves, however, requires a delicate balancing act. "As an item approaches its best before or use by dates in the week running up to Christmas its price will decrease," Sainsbury's spokesperson Cheryl Kuczynski explains.

"Stage two comes towards the end of close of play on Christmas Eve when we will distribute still-fit-to-eat seasonal products with shorter shelf life to charitable organisations such as Crisis, the Salvation Army and FareShare."

Certain items with a longer shelf life will go back on sale between Christmas and New Year for those that still want to buy seasonal gifts, she adds. Under Sainsbury's' new zero waste to landfill policy, other leftover festive fare will be sent to an anaerobic digestion plant for disposal early in the New Year.

As environmental awareness has risen, so too has concern about the effect the recession is having on those on lower incomes. This poses both a further challenge and also an opportunity for the food industry when it comes to how best do dispose of the still-fit-to-eat food it now regularly throws away.

Food poverty, a term more commonly associated with the Victorian era or Third World, is now a daily reality for some 4 million people in the UK, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which defines it as "nutritional insecurity" rather than the inability to afford to eat – in other words, an inability to eat healthily because of a low income, lack of transport or poor knowledge of how to cook healthy food.

The extent to which food poverty is becoming a growing problem is evident from the growing demands for help that charitable organisations are receiving. The Trussell Trust, which runs a food bank in Salisbury, is building a UK network of local food banks distributing food donated by individuals to those worse off in their community and has so far established a further 54 in partnership with local churches.

"We gave food to 13,000 people in crisis in 2007/8," Trussell Trust spokeswoman Molly Hudson explains. "Last year the figure rose to 26,000 – a massive jump driven by recession, and this year we expect it to rise again to close to 35,000."

FareShare, the UK's only national food bank, has also seen the demand for its services rocket. Last year it redistributed 3,100 tonnes of still-fit-to-eat food – equivalent to 7.4 million meals.

"We now feed 29,000 people a day," says Tony Lowe. "And we are working to increase our capacity by opening new local depots. The aim is to feed 100,000 people a day, distributing 20,000 tonnes annually within the next five to six years. There is no doubt – demand is growing."

Instead of relying on hand-outs from the food industry, however, FareShare acts as a food waste broker. Through its FareShare 1st operation, a social enterprise, it charges food companies to take away unwanted but still usable food – food in damaged or misprinted packaging, for example.

It then distributes the produce through its network of 12 regional depots to local community projects such as day centres, youth groups, refuges and homeless centres, and ensures the rest is broken down and disposed of sustainably rather than seeing perfectly-edible produce sent straight to landfill.

Nestlé, Kraft and Sainsbury's are among those now supporting FareShare, which is also actively promoted by the Food & Drinks Federation to its other members. Despite this, however, Lowe believes there is still considerable scope for the manufacturers and retailers to improve their approach to surplus food.

"The good news is as soon as food shops shut for Christmas we'll get a lot of longer shelf life stuff like Christmas puddings, seasonal biscuits. But it is a fact that most if not all of the fresh stuff will get lost, because even though we could shift it, without the appropriate systems and processes already in place many food companies and retailers still have no way of disposing of these products quickly enough," he says. More must be done, meanwhile, to overcome the big problem that once surplus food is considered to be waste it gets treated as waste, without hygienic handling given to food, so it immediately becomes unusable.

"The food industry talks about sending waste to anaerobic digestion plants and composting," Lowe explains. "But by matching quality surpluses with organisations that work with people who don't have regular access to proper, nutritional meals, however, you can ensure that surplus food is used for its primary purpose – human consumption."

"What is needed next is for individuals to challenge food companies and supermarkets and ask them just where their surplus food is going We need consumers to back the idea of FareShare just as they have already backed Fairtrade. If consumers want it, the food industry will make it happen."

What we waste and where it goes

Britons will spend £3bn on Christmas food this year with an average individual spending £163 on food and drink over the festive period, according to research commissioned by Christmas pudding maker Matthew Walker. 7m turkeys are expected to be eaten

Britons spent £214m on turkey; £147m on Christmas chocolates, £136.7m on seasonal packaged cakes, and £62.8m on mince pieces over Christmas 2007, according to Mintel's Christmas Foods report. Seasonal household expenditure on alcoholic drinks, meanwhile, soars by 21 per cent over the quarterly average at other times of the year

Christmas is also a time of year synonymous with waste, however. The major supermarkets' preference for fruit and vegetables of a certain size, shape and colour, for example, means UK growers expect between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of their festive crops to be rejected by retailers, according to Tristram Stuart, author of 'Waste: Uncovering The Global Food Scandal' and organiser of last week's "Feeding the 5,000" event when 5,000 passers by were offers a feast of left-over food in London's Trafalgar Square

Hundreds of thousands of tons of food are destroyed each year in the UK despite still being fit for human consumption – food retailers alone waste 500,000 tons, at least one quarter of which is still fit to eat, according to national food bank FareShare which redistributed 3,100 ton of still fit to eat food that would otherwise been wasted – equivalent to 7.4m meals – via 600 local and community projects last year

The food industry isn't the only culprit when it comes to food waste, however – British households are equally wasteful. Each year consumers throw away some 370,000 tonnes of food which has past its "best before" date and a further 220,000 tonnes whilst still in date, according to DEFRA