A bride and groom fed their 140 wedding guests and saved food from landfill by enlisting the help of food waste charity The Real Junk Food Project!
Vegan, veggies and meat-eaters were all catered for, and all enjoyed a Gregg’s Donut Tower, covered in day-old treats for dessert. Get the full story and have a look at the delicious feast here
Fancy saving a few pennies and reducing the amount of food going to waste in London at the same time? YumNow, an app which launched in June this year will help you do just that. Why not check them out and give the app a whirl?
When it comes to properly storing food, most of us are getting things really wrong! Whether you’re overstocking your fridge or are using opaque containers, chances are you’re often making some big mistakes without even realising it!
Have a read of the top 10 mistakes we’re making and get fixing your storage habits!
Check out this great blog, which has tonnes of recipes for using up leftovers!
Did you know that throwing away just under 20 fruit and vegetables over the course of a month could cost a household of four a whopping £100? Not only this, but it would waste nearly as much CO2 as a 30-mile car journey!
Food tech company It’s Fresh! have created a food waste calculator to help you work out the true cost of the fruit and veg you’re throwing out. Work out your impact on the environment and how much money you could save here
Got leftover potatoes from last night’s dinner and need some recipe inspo? Try out this quick and easy recipe from Bexley Council for potato cakes. Jazz them up any way you like with leftover veg and other odds and ends from your fridge.
Discover what else Bexley have been up to for their local Small Change, Big Difference campaign.
Check out this quick and easy recipe from Bexley Council for healthy and delicious banana pancakes. Just one banana makes 4 scrummy pancakes. Never throw out an overripe banana again!
Discover what else Bexley have been up to for their local Small Change, Big Difference campaign.
Fantastic to hear that Birmingham’s first plastic free supermarket has opened! If you visit the city, why not drop into The Clean Kilo in Digbeth and have a look round! Check it out.
Did you know that if everyone in London recycled one banana skin today, we could turn that into enough energy to charge 16, 616, 738 mobile phones? And that if each one of us recycled just one potato peel, that could be turned into enough compost to grow 1, 384, 728 brand new potatoes? Impressive, right?
Not all of us live in an area with a food waste recycling service (something which will hopefully change in the coming years!) but for those of us that do, we’ve compiled a list of top tips to help you recycle more:
Any container can act as a food waste caddy in your kitchen, so long as you place your food waste into your council-provided container outside.
Line your caddy with newspaper or kitchen roll to help keep it clean.
Empty your caddy regularly to keep smells at a minimum.
Use lemon or essential oils to keep your caddy smelling fresh.
You can recycle bones, egg shells and coffee grounds!
Did you know that if everyone in London froze their bread to make toast, we could save 2, 600,000 slices from the bin every day? Yes, you read that right! Nearly 3 million of slices of bread are currently ending up in the bin every single day – and that’s in London alone!
We’re all wasting way too much food at the moment, even those of us who think we aren’t, but the good news, is that there are lots of small changes we can all make to reverse the mounting food waste trend. Here are some of our favourite food waste prevention tips to help you out:
Freeze half a loaf and when you fancy toast, take a couple of slices out and pop them straight from the freezer into the toaster. Tap the loaf on your kitchen counter before freezing, to separate the slices.
Once you’ve opened your bagged lettuce, place it in a tub with kitchen roll. It’ll stay fresh longer.
Don’t dismiss canned and frozen veg. It’s still packed with vitamins and will keep for ages – perfect for all of us with busy schedules.
Perk up celery by putting it in a cool glass of water in the fridge.
Did you know you can freeze eggs? Simply crack them into a bowl and separate the whites from the yolks to freeze separately, or whisk together.
Take a shelfie of your fridge before shopping to avoid doubling up on items.
On 1 June 2018 we celebrated London’s rich, bountiful and diverse food culture with an event at Mercato Metropolitano. Chef Cyrus Todiwala (CBE, OBE) gave a cookery demonstration, using some of the top 10 foods we waste in the UK and was interviewed by the one and only Angellica Bell, winner of 2017 Celebrity Masterchef. Attendees had the opportunity to taste his creations, as well as sample dishes created from leftovers made by some of the stall holders at Mercato.
Watch London Live’s coverage of the event here
From pensioner to student, who wastes the most food? East London Lines followed local residents to see what they eat – and throw away – in a bid to record just how much food we waste and how.
Read the food diaries here
East London Lines ran a four day campaign in April which aimed to reduce food waste. The campaign combined a mixture of data, videos, interviews and articles to help layout the problem, whilst also profiling the creative firms who are utilising surplus food in innovative ways.
Find out more about the campaign here
Don’t throw away those leftover fruit and vegetable peelings! Colleen from Expert Home Tips has compiled 25 alternative uses for your leftover peelings, many of which we’ve never come across before! Check them out here.
Your food waste could be turned into compost, which farmers can use to fertilise their crops.
Find out how it’s done:
Did you know your food waste can be turned into electricity?
Watch this video to find out how it’s done:
Open your fridge, grab the ingredients closest to their use-by date and create a recipe from food that would otherwise go to waste. This is the challenge set by The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in their new campaign, #RecipeForDisaster, which aims to raise awareness and money for hungry people by asking the general public to be more conscious of their food waste – one of the fundamental steps towards eradicating global hunger.
We produce enough food globally to feed all the world’s 7 billion people, and yet, one in nine people still go to bed hungry each night.
Watch the video to learn how you can create your own #RecipeForDisaster and find out more about the campaign here: —–
There are over 8,000 fast food outlets in London alone and each meal served provides on average 68% of recommended daily calories. The link between number of fast food outlets, fast food consumption and obesity rate is well established
Online takeaway delivery has also increased in recent years, shifting towards takeaways being an everyday option. However, the nutritional and calorific content of takeaways continue to reflect their traditional use – as an occasional treat.
Shift have been exploring how everyday takeaways can be just as convenient and affordable, but healthier for you. Find out more about their research project.
It looks like sustainability is starting to make waves in the drinks world too! Sustainable serves, which means applying eco-friendly principles behind the bar as well as when purchasing drinks ingredients, are cropping up more and more, with businesses thinking about their water, energy and food waste impacts.
To encourage the sustainable cocktail movement, London hotspot Sexy Fish have created a cocktail menu that uses no perishables, with citrus, herbs and garnishes replaced with a homemade range of cordials, syrups and shrubs, as well as an accompanying recipe book which shows people how to re-create the drinks at home.
Find out more here
One Planet Plate is a restaurant movement that puts sustainability on the menu. Restaurants across the UK will be serving special sustainable dishes this weekend as part of the campaign, which is launching on Saturday 24 March, to coincide with WWF’s Earth Hour.
Head over to the One Planet Plate website, find a participating restaurant near you and try their special dish first hand! Share your pics and thoughts on social using #oneplanetplate
Every day in the UK, 24 million slices of bread are thrown away – that’s a frightening 1 million slices every single hour.
Love Food Hate Waste has launched the Make Toast Not Waste campaign to help all of us in the UK reduce the astronomical amounts of bread that are currently going to waste, simply by popping our loaves in the freezer.
Did you know you can make toast straight from frozen bread and it taste just as good as if you made it from fresh? Find out more about the campaign and get loads of toast topper inspiration over at the Make Toast Not Waste campaign page. Don’t forget to share your best toast topper ideas on social using #maketoastnotwaste
According to the sustainability charity Wrap, around 10 million tonnes of food has been binned in the UK every year since 2012. That’s enough loaves of bread to almost fill Wembley Stadium; enough milk to fill 230 Olympic-sized swimming pools; and the weight of 365 blue whales in bananas alone. Food waste within homes accounted for more than 70% of this, and yet in a recent survey by Wrap, nearly 60% of people said they never, or rarely, wasted food – we’re in denial!
Meet some of the food waste warriors who are tackling the problem head on.
Almost a third of Australians leave food on their plate when dining out, so Dianne McGrath, Director of Food for Thought Consulting Australia, challenged herself to live off their leftovers. Find out how her experiment panned out here
Top chefs Tom Aikens and Francesco Mazzei will go head to head in a ‘Ready Steady Cook’ challenge at Mazzei’s new restaurant Fiume on Monday 19 February. Each chef will create a number of sharing dishes from ingredients provided by The Felix Project, a charity which delivers surplus food to charities so that they can provide healthy meals to those most in need. Diners will try the dishes and vote for their favourite using the BBC show’s iconic red tomato and green pepper score cards.
All proceeds from the night will go directly to The Felix Project. Tickets still available here.
Veg Power is a collaborative campaign that is shining a spotlight on the lack of advertising spend for veg and is calling for a different approach: The Veg Ad Fund aims to harness the joint power of all those that benefit from veg consumption – farmers, retailers, restaurants and government.
Poor diet is now the greatest threat to health and well-being in the UK and yet only 1.2% of food and drink advertising is being spent on promoting vegetables to children. In fact, a recent study by the Food Foundation showed that a shocking 95.5% of children aged 11-16 aren’t eating enough vegetables.
Find out more about the campaign, download resources and get more information on the Veg Ad Fund here: https://vegpower.org.uk/