Love Food Hate Waste

Reducing food waste is a major issue. We throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food from our homes every year in the UK.

It's not just about good food going to waste either; wasting food costs the average family with children £680 a year, or £50 a month, and has serious environmental implications too.

Not only does it produce a powerful greenhouse gas, methane, when food goes to landfill but the production, processing, packaging, storage and transportation of food uses large amounts of energy, waste and resources. If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road.

Over 60% of the food we throw away is avoidable and could have been eaten. The main reasons for wasting food are;

• Cooking or preparing too much – for e.g. rice and pasta that then gets left in the saucepan or on the plate and ends up in the bin, or
• Not using food in time – either before it goes past it’s use-by date i.e. meat and dairy or it ‘goes off’ i.e. fruit and vegetables.

These issues are easy to overcome for example by reducing portion sizes, using up leftovers or buying fewer fresh items more frequently. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign, run by WRAP*, aims to raise awareness of the food waste problem and the website provides lots of useful information including;

• Delicious leftover and rescue recipe idea’s to make your food go further
• Top tips on storing and freezing food
• Portion calculator and meal planning
• Advice on date labels and much more…

Little Chefs in Buckinghamshire have joined the campaign by producing the Rescue Recipe Cookbook that you can download for many inventive recipes that will help you reduce your food waste. The cookbook was designed as part of the Rethink Rubbish at School Waste Education Programme from Recycle for Buckinghamshire.

Unavoidable food waste like fruit and vegetable peelings, tea bags and egg shells can be composted at home. Even meat and fish bones can be treated in an environmentally friendly way with food digesters like the Green Cone.

*Love Food Hate Waste is brought to you by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), who is also responsible for encouraging recycling and home composting. WRAP's vision is a world without waste, where resources are used sustainably. Find out more at www.wrap.org.uk.