Take action as a Food Saving Hero

In the UK, we throw away 10.2m tonnes of food waste each year, creating more than 20m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – the same emissions as 3.5m cars. The average UK household wastes a staggering £540 worth of food each year. By taking action and reducing our food waste at home, we are able to not only save money but can help tackle climate change too. 

During a four month period from Christmas 2021 Octopus Community Network recruited 20 Islington citizen scientists to take part in the ALF Food Saving Heroes experiment – to measure their food footprint during a 4 week period. The data provided by our 20 citizen scientists was reviewed and analysed by Dr Christian Reynolds – read more about his report here.

This is what they learnt:

🌍 Writing things down encourages small changes - why not take our one week food diary challenge?
🌍 Knowing how much is leftover makes it easy to cook a bit less
🌍 Eating root veg with peel means less waste and an added vitamin hit
🌍 Soups go a long way to getting the most out of veg and/or meat
🌍 It’s all about making food go a bit further, and makings savings
🌍 Think of it as game – see what you can make from whatever is in the fridge 😊

What you can do to take action on Food Waste:

👉 Plan your shopping and get more for your money
👉 Make your food last longer
👉 Get more from your shopping, use what you buy

Try these wasteless recipes:

🍳 Caramel bread pudding  – based on a Latin American recipe
🍳 Pancakes using leftover spinach, mushrooms and crème fraiche – adapted from a recipe like this ham and cheese BBC Good Food one, simply swop in leftovers of the same weight, and use crème fraiche instead of /with the milk.
🍳 Green sauce / salsa verde/ chimichurri / green seasoning using up herby ends, or the green tops of veg eg carrots and drizzled on food, used as a marinade or with pasta.