Eat up

DoAction 36

Reduce your food wasteDoers doing this DoAction have pledged to save: 19088 kg CO₂

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Food is fantastic. But we often overestimate our appetite: you know the story of that massive chicken curry that never got finished, or the mould that profited more from the special offer on hot cross buns than you did.

120 kg

of food thrown away per person every year¹ - that’s 150 loaves of bread.

Food is not waste, so be conscious of how much nosh you put in your shopping basket and what you do with it, and get more for what you buy.

Why?

Waste

The average UK household discards 25% of the food and drink they buy.² That’s like coming home with four shopping bags of food and throwing one straight in the bin. Together we stack up almost 7 million tons of food waste, which the already stuffed landfills have to swallow. 60% of this food could have been eaten.³

Climate change

When we throw food away, all the energy that went into growing, producing and transporting it goes to waste too. Moreover, rotting organic waste on landfill sites produces the greenhouse gas methane, which is even more potent than CO₂.

3% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from discarded food. Together with emissions caused abroad, that’s 20 million tons CO₂e, the same as the amount of carbon produced by 7 million cars.⁴

Water

Water is a precious resource used throughout the food production process. Each person throws away the equivalent of 280 litres of water a day with the food they bin.⁵ That’s double the amount of water the average household uses every day.

Money

A bargain is only a bargain if you need it, as Mum always said. The “3 for £5” special offer on the strawberries is no good if the berries are going to end up forgotten and rotten. Spending money on something you’ll never use is pretty pointless.
Collectively, the UK squanders £12 billion on never-to-be-munched-on food.⁶

How?

Here are some top tips of our own:

Plan ahead and write a shopping list.
Don’t fall for bulk offers.
Prepare adequate portions.
Freeze your leftovers.
Be creative and use up the leftovers - why not turn those squishy bananas into a lovely milkshake?
Share with your housemates or bring leftovers into work for lunch
Store food properly. Bread in the fridge will go off, while most fruit will like it there.
Trust your senses. Remember that ‘best before’ dates mean exactly that – they’re best before, but they’re ok after too.

Love Food Hate Waste is a great source of simple advice on how to store your food and also allows you to look for tasty recipes with the ingredients you already have.