Dinners in the Bin

According to The Waste and Resources Action Programme, in the UK, (WRAP) 70% of all food waste comes from the household, 7.1 million tonnes to be exact and according to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, half of that could have been eaten. Unbelievably, every day 20 million slices of bread and 3.1 million slices of cheese are thrown away, that’s a lot of cheese toasties or sandwiches that never got made!

In Bristol, households are throwing away £60 worth of food into their black bin. On average, 25 percent of the waste going into Bristol’s black non-recycling bins is food and the problem is that when it breaks down it emits methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.

Food labelling has been identified as a key culprit for good food being wasted and as such food producers and supermarkets are revising labels with refrigeration and freezing instructions being added.

New labelling offers storage instructions and guidance to extend the life of food.

Did you know food can still be eaten after a Best Before date? Use the taste test to check it’s quality, as there is no danger to your health. To reduce cheese being wasted, ‘Use by’ dates have been replaced by ‘Best Before’ as it is often good for longer. Pay more attention to ‘Use By’ dates on items like meat and fish.

Easy tips to save waste and money:

These tips are courtesy of Heather Mack (West of England Gleaning Cordinator), Jacqui Reeves (Bristol Community Fridge Coordinator) and Love Food Hate Waste   

• Plan meals and make a shopping list of items for those meals
• Use a portion planner (available at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com)
• Reuse food for different meals or look up leftover recipes
• Freeze bread, milk, leftover cooked meat and fruit. Frozen black bananas are great for cakes.You can even grate cheese and beat eggs to freeze.

You can find more tips on the Love Food Hate Waste website, plus anyone who contacts Heather to register with the West of England Gleaning Network will get a recipe book for using leftovers (while stocks last).

And if you have good food that is in date that you know you won’t eat, you can look at food sharing options such as Olio, the food sharing app or a community fridge. The Community Fridge Network is just getting set up in Bristol, with the first one opening in the St.Pauls Learning Centre in early September. The principle of a community fridge explains Jacqui Reeves, Bristol Community Fridge Coordinator is that anyone can drop off food including “Cafes, allotment holders, households and supermarkets” and “unlike a food bank anyone can go to collect it”

The first Community Fridge will open in St. Paul’s Learning Centre in September.

Jacqui is keen to hear from for other venues such as community centres, libraries or city farms, that has space for a three square metre fridge and shelving as well as a good footfall of people in an area with some food deprivation as well as food suppliers, contact her for more information.

And if you do need to throw away food that has become waste then here are some tips for using the brown food bin from Geneco who turn our food waste into biogas for electricity and soil fertiliser.

• Even if you don’t think you create much food waste, recycling just one banana peel could generate enough energy to fully charge a smartphone twice.
• There is no need to buy special compostable bags. You can line the bin with newspaper or even a plastic bag if you find it really disgusting as at the treatment plant, all packaging, including compostable plastics, are removed.
•  Tea bags (even those made with plastic) can go in the food bin. Processing just six tea bags creates enough energy to make another cup of tea.

The recent Slim My waste Feed My Face campaign encouraging food bin usage to reduce food in the black bin

Here’s a final bit of food for thought: preventing household food waste in the UK would save the same amount of carbon dioxide as taking one in every four cars off the road.
So next time you’re shopping, making breakfast or looking at leftovers, think about how you’re going to prevent good food from being wasted.

Hero Image Photo Credit: WRAP

This article is part of a six month series on waste, investigating what is happening at a local and national level and where Bristol businesses and residents can get involved to make a change.

Read about all the schemes redistributing surplus food in Bristol and how you can get involved: b247.staging.proword.press/lifestyle/environment/salvaging-surplus-from-the-supermarket-supply-chain/

Read up on what Bristol’s hospitability businesses are doing to tackle food waste visit: b247.staging.proword.press/lifestyle/environment/thats-not-hospitable/