Food | Zero Waste Scotland

Well I have found a positive to all this snow. I haven’t made it to the shops since Saturday (which in itself has saved me money) and as a result I have been living off my freezer for the last couple of nights and what I can get to in my veg plot (once I have scraped away the 2 foot of snow that covers it). So I now have lots of space in my freezer for any Christmas leftovers or extra provisions for unexpected visitors like mince pies, rolls and banana loaf (which I made from 4 very overripe bananas on Sunday). It is amazing the meals you can pull together from lots of odd ‘bits’ that are in most freezers.

I had some cocktail sausages left over from a party which we luckily had on Saturday, so I checked on the Love Food Hate Waste website for some inspiration. I have put the link below. I used cocktail sausages, mixed veg instead of the pepper (which I didn’t have) and an onion instead of spring onion (which I didn’t have either) and I have to say it was great, even my fussy family agreed. The Jambalaya was a success, glad the website was there, I needed help!

http://www.wasteawarelovefood.org.uk/meatSausages.asp

Two interesting stories appeared this week, both concerning food and packaging waste. The first relates to a simple idea being rolled out throughout the UK by The Co-Op (aka Scotmid in Scotland) which is to put storage advice on the little bags you put fresh fruit and vegetables in. The advice will cover a range of commonly purchased items and show the best way to store them to minimise wastage.

Storage Tips are Useful

The guidance on each bag will be as follows:

Product	Storage	Comments
Apples	Fridge	Best eaten at room temperature
Peaches, nectarines	Fridge	Ripen at room temperature
Bananas	Room temperature	Keep away from other fruits. Never put in the fridge.
Broccoli	Fridge
Carrots	Fridge
Courgettes	Fridge
Leeks	Fridge
Onions	Cool, dark and dry
Oranges, lemons, limes etc	Fridge	Best eaten at room temperature
Parsnips	Fridge
Pears	Fridge	Ripen at room temperature
Peppers	Fridge
Potatoes	Cool and dark

Hopefully this advice will lead to reduced incidents of spoilage and minimise the occasions where you find a dripping green pile of slime at the back of your fridge that may have once been a courgette.

The Co-Op is also planning to replace BOGOF offers on perishables with other forms of discount where applicable. A bold step indeed.

Find more about this story here. For more information on the Love Food Hate Waste campaign we run to help households with their food waste click here.

The second story relates to M&S and their Plan A (cleverly “there is no plan B”). They have made huge progress with the targets they set themselves. Particularly with single-use carrier bags which they have reduced by 83% compared to a target of 33%, partly by charging for such bags and partly by highlighting the possibilities of bag reuse to their customers.

Do You Have a Plan A?

It seems some of the plans being laid by retailers are starting to come to fruition, which is good news for food and packaging waste.

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Tag Archives: Food

Empty Freezer

Tackling food and packaging waste