Food Saving Heroes - Report
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 a copy of his report
And overall food saving in our group was good - 84% of them reported less waste than the UK average of 1.3kg per person per week.
We can see from the report...
We can see from the report...
🌍 Some households had relatively lower footprints due to wasting foods with lower environmental impacts e.g. less waste of animal products (see Diaries #2 and #13 on slide 4).
🌍 The majority of food waste was composted (103kg) and/or disposed of via waste caddy (99kg). Though this does not negate the environmental impact of production, it does ensure the GHGE impacts will be mitigated through future use as compost, rather than being landfilled and converted into methane. (slide 7).
🌍 The top 5 wasted foods totalled 63 kg or 56%. These foods were: Root veg (inc peelings) 17.7 kg, Mixed meal waste 16 kg, Other Veg 12.4kg, Other Fruit 10kg and Coffee/Tea 7 kg. (slide 10).
🌍 Edible Root Vegetable waste was described as peelings – and by not peeling vegetables, this waste could easily be reduced (slide 10)
🌍 The average weight of food wasted per diary was 231g. Rice had an average disposal rate of 621g per diary – significantly higher and suggesting that too much rice has been cooked. Portion control is a key tactic in reducing food waste – a portion of uncooked rice for 1 person weighs 50g. (slide 11)
🌍 Some of our citizen scientists said it only took 7 days to learn about their food waste habits, enough to see changes in what they cooked in the subsequent weeks. (slide 14)
