PLATFORM:THE BENDY carrot and knobbly turnip can be seen in polite society once again. This is certainly a cause for celebration. But while last week's decision by the European Commission will relax some of the stringent rules on the appearance of fruit and vegetables in the EU, it will take a lot more work to tackle the issue of food waste, writes Feargal Quinn.

We are all implicated in this shameful practice. A recent report by the Institute of Grocery Distribution, a think tank for food retailers, estimates that of the 27 million tonnes dumped into landfill in the UK last year, 20 per cent of it was food, either unused, gone off or leftovers.

Ireland is likely to have similarly wasteful habits. We are certainly more wasteful in our general rubbish use. We generate 40 per cent more municipal waste per person than the UK average and we use landfill for one-third more of our waste.

This is a frightful amount. It is not simply the waste of food itself that is deplorable. The food has been harvested, prepared, transported and stocked. So food waste is also a waste of fuel, productive land, labour and landfill. We could be putting this energy to more productive use.

So what is behind this deplorable activity? European rules are in fact a small part of the story. Retailers have also been guilty of rejecting fruit and vegetables merely because of the way they look. The global spike in commodity prices has recently made retailers more keen to stock non-standard-shaped produce, but it has not always been thus. The greatest fear of any retailer is that customers will turn their noses up at cucumbers that are shaped like boomerangs, and take their business elsewhere.

I remember a customer complaining to me once that oranges at Superquinn did not look as pretty as the oranges in a rival shop, where they were brighter in colour.

I explained that Superquinn's policy was to only buy oranges that met a required sweetness level, and then I suggested that we go to the fruit aisle and try one of these oranges.

We agreed it was delicious, and I asked the gentleman whether he would prefer a homely looking orange that was delicious or a beautiful orange that was dry and bitter. He preferred the former of course.

I was delighted that the ugly but delicious fruit won the argument that time, but this is not always the case. It is a brave retailer indeed who stocks his store with misshapen fruit in the hope that the consumer will choose personality - or value - over looks. More often than not, the retailer fears his goods will look bad compared with the competition and he will be left with unsold produce, so he rejects it before it gets on the shelf.

The third cause of waste is perhaps the most important: the consumer.

It is difficult to get a precise sense of the scale of consumer food waste (as opposed to that of supermarkets or farms) but, in a study last year, the Waste Resources Action Programme in the UK estimated that the average British household threw out 18 per cent of all the food it purchased. Households with children threw out 27 per cent. Ready meals and baked goods are among the most commonly wasted products, as are milk, meat, bread and packaged goods of all varieties.

So what can be done?

Firstly, the EU must go further. The emancipation of the pear-shaped courgette and his oppressed vegetable brethren is wonderful, but let us be under no illusions: European regulations remain for the 10 most commonly traded fruit and vegetables, including tomatoes, apples, peppers and citrus fruits.

Together these goods account for more than 70 per cent of trade in fresh produce. So while the European decision is laudable, it does not go far enough. In an era of spiralling food-price inflation and as Europe faces into recession, it is time to repeal the remaining regulations.

The original rationale for these regulations was that uniform sizes would help promote commerce between countries, so a retailer in France could order asparagus from Germany and be confident of the size and shape of product they would receive. These standards are still helpful, but the compulsion to always adhere to them is not. Retailers should be allowed to order irregular vegetables if they want.

Secondly, ordinary shoppers must play a role. We all lead busy lives but, as consumers, we must pay closer attention to when food is going bad or about to go bad, and plan accordingly.

Even worse than neglecting to pay attention to when food is about to go bad is doing the opposite - many people adhere to the rule of best-before dates with greater strictness than the first medieval monks adhered to the rule of Saint Benedict. We should not ignore these dates, but beer that is a week out of date is still safe to consume.

Finally, supermarkets should be bolder and keep experimenting. Effective resealable packaging must appear on more products. Also, everyone knows that larger-sized packets provide better value than individual portions, but retailers must seek to reduce this price differential so people do not buy large amounts of food that subsequently go off. It is no economy to save your customers money by selling them a larger portion, if half of that portion ends up in the bin.

Supermarkets should also be brave enough to sell those odd-shaped fruit and vegetables. Provided they are clearly labelled as being irregularly shaped but still tasty, retailers should not fear their customers' views or the diminution of their brand. It also means that store managers would get to share an orange with their customers from time to time, an experience I recommend to anybody in the business.

Feargal Quinn is an independent member of Seanad Éireann and chairman of EuroCommerce