Food waste action week
Monday the 7th March marks the start of Food Waste Action Week 2022. This is a week where ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’ want to show everyone just how much our food waste can have an impact on climate change.
If global food waste was an individual country, it would be the third largest contributer to global warming after the USA and China!
When we throw away food, we are not only wasting the physical food, but we are also wasting the time and energy that has gone into producing and transporting the food. Did you know, wasted food accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions globally than all of the commercial flights that we take each year?
It often feels like there is not much that we can do about climate change as it is such a large and complex issue, but 70% of the 10 million tonnes of food waste in the UK comes from our own kitchens.
10 things we CAN do:
- Freeze everything you can before it goes out of date.
- Take a shelfie before shopping (a picture of the food on your shelves already).
- Eat all of the edible parts, yes even the broccoli stems – compleat your meal.
- Enjoy the easiness of leftovers for dinner sometimes.
- Keep track of your date labels – best before does not mean use by!
- Store everything in the right place.
- Be mindful when eating out too, take home leftovers, tell the chef you don’t want that side salad.
- Keep your refrigerator at 5 degrees Celsius or below.
- Make new meals out of your leftovers, find some inspiration here: Recipes | Love Food Hate Waste.
- Plan your portions so you don’t buy too much food.