What can be done to reduce food waste?

moneyistooshorttomention

But put over differently and as a "fun, fashionable" thing to do - then maybe people might be attracted these days.

Obviously - not just slanted at young parents and even more so not just at female young parents.

I wondered afterwards whether I should have made it clear that I would expect both men and women equally to turn up at these classes - but then thought "Nah...that won't be necessary any more to make that clear. It'll be obvious nowadays that it's for both sexes equally". Would the reason so few people attended be because it was slanted at just women? Many women even will be put off by things that look as if they will be women-only.

So - it's raised a valid point - ie that it needs to be made crystal clear that it's for "people" and not just for "women" and that men are expected to come along too. Maybe photos up of people like Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, for instance, helping to show that its a "people" thing and NOT a "woman" thing. As a cis woman myself - I get very fed-up with finding things being slanted at women only in this day and age and, sure enough, when they have been slanted that way - it's just women that turn up:(

In fact - over the years (and particularly recently) I've always expected/noticed that it's just as much men as women that come along to learn to cook/help with any food projects/etc that I've been near. I'm struggling to recall what the school did that was different and changed the emphasis (as it was so many years ago now - ie the 1960s) but there was a point in my schooldays when things swopped from being conventional "old-style" cookery classes and it was all female attendance to a rather different style of cookery class (more slanted to making meals/enjoying them together I seem to recall???) and it was 50/50 boys and girls attending and had become rather a "fun" activity to do.

suki1964

Education has to be the start. Get home Ecc back on the curriculum Not as it is now, where it's all about opening a can or packet, but how it used to be, learning to make from scratch. Pastry, bread, soup, how to choose the best meat for the dish you want to prepare, learning the cuts of animals. Learning how to meal plan and make good choices learning the food groups and what effect they all have on the body

Stop pre packed fruit and veg. If a recipe asks for 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 chilli, that is what needs to be bought. That will get used. If a pack of chillies etc has to be bought, there's the waste

Force supermarkets to sell the different grade of fruit and veg at the different prices they command. When I first started in retail, we did sell class 1 and class 2, and the prices changed to reflect this. This will go towards stopping the waste at field level. Esp if you outlaw the practice of supermarkets changing their minds on orders. If a farmer is contracted to supply, the the supermarket should be forced to take the produce, no matter what it looks like and then price it accordingly

Take refuse collection out of the rates and look at Germany's refuse collections. Charge for black bin waste by weight. Once consumers are charged for what they dispose of, they will soon think twice about throwing away.

We have a wealth of celeb chefs, as a nation we love our food !!!!!!. Use this. Jamie and Hugh both do Stirling jobs but neither go far enough. They are targeting the middle classes or the already converted. We need chefs/cooks to target those who really do live in the real world and need to learn to feed a family on a tight budget. Not these unrealistic programmes we see where a family is congratulated for getting a weeks shop down from £400 to £300. Those of us who post here are either offering help or are asking for help on how to feed a family on a lot lot less then that, some of us having no more then £10 a week per person. That's real people

Back to the supermarkets. Can we not get shot of all these different dates on fresh food? Use by, sell by, bb, too confusing for most. Most are a ploy to get us to throw out and go re buy. We have a generation of people who religiously believe food has to be consumed by midnight of the shown date else it will poison them. We have a generation who don't know that if food is frozen instead of binned that it will be fine to eat a couple of weeks later. The food I make from scratch doesn't have a use by or sell by date and I've never poisoned anyone yet.

We have an obiesity problem, we have a rise in diabetes, we have a generation of people who don't know how to cook, don't know how to store food safely, know sod all about nutrition.

Take it right back to basics and start the change with home Ecc , just keep the lessons real. No one needs to be taught how to make a batch of 15's, they do need to learn nutrition, budgeting, food safety and basic cooking skills

bexster1975

I must say, on reading the OP my initial thoughts were " it's not exactly rocket science" and " much of the behaviours currently allowed by the government of the day suggests they are not remotely concerned about waste". Having read the thread, there seem to be a lot of people who may have thought the same!

I don't really have anything more to add to this, but criminalising people for skip diving, allowing business to throw away sandwiches etc at close of business ( I realise this is improving, but I worked for several food retailers as a student, and we would have been sacked if we had given away - rather than thrown away - sandwiches at the end of the day). " deals" as mentioned here including BOGOFS. Fruit and veg that goes off in less than a week, packaged in sweaty plastic. I wonder if the government could point to all the things they have done over the past 20 years to IMPROVE the levels of food waste?

Bexster

greenbee

Legal separation of food waste into a separate waste stream, so that it can't go to landfill/incineration but only to reuse/recycling, composting or AD.
Mandating separate collections for food waste for both domestic and trade which makes people more aware of what they are wasting.
Allowing food waste to be mixed with sewage sludge when used in AD plants
Smart bins to provide annual/quarterly/monthly reports and analysis to households and communities on the food waste patterns

Nargleblast

It is a sad indictment of the times we live in that such things as food banks exist, but here they are, and will be for some time. How about the supermarkets in the morning selecting fruit and veg starting to turn and delivering it on vans to the food banks in the area? The food banks could then make up batches of fruit and veg to be handed out that afternoon along with the usual tinned and dried stuff, with instructions that it should be used within the next few days or as appropriate? They could also have printed leaflets with recipes for soup or puddings using the fruit and veg of the day. Although I like getting reduced fruit and veg I would not begrudge it being given to those in need.

moneyistooshorttomention

That sounds like feasible ideas to me Nargleblast.

Easy enough to have generic (laminated?) cards printed or small give-away booklets to people. It doesnt need to be specific - eg we're giving away rhubarb today - so let's give out recipes that state they are specifically for rhubarb for instance.

A generic card/few pages in booklet going "Got fruit? - Then you can do crumble (here's the recipe), charlotte (here's the recipe), smoothies (ditto)". Same for veggies - "Got vegetables? - Then you can do soup, curry, vegetable crumble, lasagne, etc".

I think that's part of it - ie having basic/adaptable Core Recipes. I know it can be offputting looking through recipes that don't tell you that you can substitute x for z on the one hand OR that specify a small quantity of some ingredient that you will rarely use elsewhere (or is too "fashionable" to be able to get it currently outside a city). Even foods we nowadays regard as "standard"/can buy them anywhere must have been difficult to get outside cities a few decades ago (eg olive oil, peppers, etc) and there are certainly foods I regard as "standard" that can't be found yet even in towns. But the recipes have to be "modern" enough not to put off a lot of people too as looking outdated. A fine balance to be struck....

Cappella

There are some brilliant ideas here. Education is the key. Get rid of Design Technology as a primary/ secondary subject ( how many designers do we need?) and replace it with Life Skills. Teach budgeting, home economics, sewing, decorating and woodwork, which are skills that everyone needs.
But don't leave it all to the teachers. Or to women. Men should have an equal responsibility as regards food food preparation. Leaving education to any one sector of society would create an unreasonable pressure. Parents and local and national government also have a responsibility to ensure that all people are equipped with essential Life Skills. Use the BBC ( funded by our license money after all) to make good, entertaining and informative Life Skills programmes, linked to a National Curriculum, to be screened in both primary and secondary schools. Employ government sponsored web writers to create linked websites (linked to a Life Skills curriculum) to be used in school AND at home. Making cakes at home, following website information and instructions as part of a child's homework will inevitably involve parental help (and maybe teach them how to bake at the same time).
Tax ready meals heavily. There is no incentive for anyone to learn to cook from scratch if heavily processed, high fat, high sugar content, ready meals are cheaper than the alternative option. This would cut plastic waste effectively as well.
Educate, and tax the supermarkets - they DO respond eventually to governmental and consumer pressure - who continue to sell everything in plastic wrap! What happened to paper bags, wood chip baskets, greaseproof paper?
Initiate a reward system for supermarkets who make a GENUINE effort to avoid surplus food waste by donating it to local charities.
The key really is in educating people to believe that waste is both abhorrent and a morally wrong though. Link Life Skills to a Citizenship programme, educating all.

[Deleted User]

In wartime I believe there used to be a communal waste bin for kitchen scraps on every street, for the pig club, where folks put vegetable waste in and got some of the pork from the pigs being reared on it. Some sort of scheme whereby folks donated their compostable waste and gone over produce to go to the local recycling plant to be composted, it would have to be collected on a regular basis and some reward given, maybe vouchers for veg/fruit from a local shop would avoid vegetable matter going to the local land fill site. A far fetched idea perhaps would be to get the WI involved as they were in wartime making jams and canning fruit which could be donated to food banks perhaps from fruit that is on its sell by date from the supermarkets?

Emm-in-a-pickle

Supermarket labelling has de-skilled a generation of shoppers. When people bought meat or bacon from a real butcher, or cheese, bread from a real bakery, they didn`t have labels and dates, and thank God I can still buy loose fruit and veg from a real greengrocer!
So many people are now scared to trust the evidence of their own eyes and noses, have become too reliant on date labels. That problem needs tackling every bit as much as the nonsense about uniform size & shape for fresh produce.

LameWolf

GreyQueen wrote: »

I would much rather buy what I needed loose if I wasn't shooting a hole in my purse by doing so.

^ ^ ^ Exactly this!

JackieO wrote: »

I wrap celery in tin foil as well as cabbage and it keeps perfectly for as long as I can eat it Being on my own a head of celery takes around a couple of weeks in salads unless I turn what remains into celery soup.

Thanks for that tip; I like celery but DH doesn't, so I go without, as I've always felt I wouldn't eat it all up in time.

I was thinking about this in the bath this morning (don't ask.....) and I do feel there's still much confusion about the difference between Use By, Sell By and Best Before dates, with a good number of people thinking they mean pretty much the same thing.