Christmas Roadshows
The Love Food Hate Waste Team will be at the Grand Arcade on December 15 & 16. Once again we will be teaming up with the chefs from Gallimores to bring you some delicious Christmas treats to help reduce your food waste this Christmas.
If you can't make it, click the links below to download a selection of seasonal recipes all designed to make the most of your food this Christmas. There are four recipe booklets to choose from:
Easy Bites Christmas Recipes (.pdf, 189KB)
Leftovers Christmas Recipes (.pdf, 225KB)
Freeze Ahead Recipes (.pdf, 258KB)
Freezer Essential Recipes (.pdf, 212KB)
Love Food Hate Waste
Love Food Hate Waste is the ‘Waste Not Want Not’ of the modern day, providing handy tips, advice and recipes for leftovers to help everyone waste less food.
Around a third of all the food we buy ends up being thrown in the bin and most of this could have been eaten. Reducing food waste is a major issue and not just about good food going to waste; wasting food costs the average family £420 a year and has serious environmental implications too.
So why does cutting food waste matter?
The vast majority of us already think throwing away good food is a dreadful waste. Hence the name of our campaign 'Love Food, Hate Waste'.
The amount of food we throw away is a waste of resources. Just think about all the energy, water and packaging used in food production, transportation and storage. This all goes to waste when we throw away perfectly good food.
Cheese is a good example – feeding and milking the cows, cooling and transporting the milk, processing it in to cheese, packing it, getting it to the shops, keeping it at the right temperature all the time. If it then gets thrown away it will most likely end up in a landfill site, where, rather than harmlessly decomposing as many people think, it rots and actually releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
If we stopped wasting food which could have been eaten, it would have the same impact on carbon emissions as taking 1 in 5 cars off UK roads. This could make a significant contribution to overall greenhouse gas emissions, and save us time and money. And as far as packaging is concerned, we actually throw away more food from our homes than packaging in the UK every year!
The best thing that can happen to food is that it makes it to our plates and is enjoyed. Avoiding throwing out food that could have been eaten will save you money and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However some food waste is inevitable. Egg shells, banana skins and tea bags are never going to be on the menu. Home composting is a great way to stop this sort of waste ending up in landfill, and our gardens will really thank us for it. See recycle now website (external link) for all you need to know about home composting.
Some Statistics
- At least £12 billion worth of food and drink that could have been consumed is thrown out every year. UK householders are throwing out on average at around £480/year. This increases to around £680/ year for families with children. This works out at just over £50 a month.
- We throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink per year in the UK - most of this (5.3 million tonnes) could have been consumed. That’s like filling 4,700 Olympic sized swimming pools.
- Avoidable drink waste costs us £1.6 billion annually.
- We throw food out for two main reasons: 1) we cook or prepare too much, costing us around £4.8 billion per year; 2) we let food go off, either completely untouched, or opened/started but not finished, costing £6.7 billion per year.
- In terms of environmental impact – producing, storing and getting the food and drink to our homes uses a lot of energy. If we stopped wasting all this food and drink, it would save the equivalent of at least 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s like taking 1 in 4 cars off UK roads.
