Food Waste Action Week 2024

From 18 – 24 March, we will be supporting Love Food Hate Waste’s annual food waste reduction campaign. Food Waste Action Week has been raising awareness of household food waste since 2021, and will continue to do so this year with the theme of Choose What You’ll Use.

The Choose What You’ll Use campaign encourages households to consider buying loose wherever possible and choosing to buy what will be used rather than over-purchasing.

This is on the basis that UK households throw away 4.7 million tonnes of edible food a year, each day throwing away…

…2.9 million potatoes

…1 million bananas

…2.1 million carrots

WRAP (Waste Resource Action Programme), the organisation behind Love Food Hate Waste, have found out through research that we could save 60,000 tonnes of food waste if all apples, bananas and potatoes were sold loose.

Throughout this week we will be posting fun and informative content on our social media pages to encourage Leicestershire residents to Choose What You’ll Use.

How can you join in this week with Choose What You’ll Use?

1. Plan, plan, plan

Make a list of what you’ll eat for the next week and write a list of ingredients you will need to buy, checking your cupboard, fridge and freezer as you do this. It’s

important here to check the quantities of what you’ll need. If

you need a bit of help with planning and using everything up, look at UK Harvest’s Youtube channel for some help in the kitchen.

2. Resist ‘grabbing-a-bag’

We tend to think buying more is cheaper, however, this is only if everything gets used. For example, if a 2kg bag of baking potatoes is £1.60, yet you only need 500g of potatoes, only buy 500g of them.  If you don’t, you may waste 1.5kg of potatoes and lose out on £1.20.

3. Choose which fruit and veg you fancy

It’s not just about the items often being wrapped in single-use packaging or getting more than you needed, it’s also about choosing the size, the shape and the colour of what you purchase. For example, some like bananas quite ripe whilst others like them quite green. Don’t forget that it’s not just fruit and vegetables which you can purchase loose!

What is the benefit of doing this?

1. Buying less gives us more

If we choose to buy what food we need, we’ll be buying less and have more money to spend on other things.

2. Feel good

We all know that wasting food (or anything) isn’t a great feeling. Making sure we buy what we need means we are saving food from going in the bin at home.

3. Reducing other waste

Buying loose means less food gets wasted as you only buy what you need, but also, less packaging is wasted whether it be plastic, paper, or cardboard. Overall, fewer resources are wasted because of buying loose. You could also take your own bag to avoid using single use plastic/paper bags for loose items.

If you need help with how to reduce your food waste at home, visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com or take Love Food Hate Waste’s quiz.