AD – This post is sponsored by CleanerBins, your friendly neighbourhood bin cleaners.
Today is Stop Food Waste Day, an awareness day to ignite change around global food waste by sharing practical advice. For this blog post, I’ve teamed up with CleanerBins to share my tips for small changes you can make to reduce food waste. Did you know that over a third of all food produced globally goes to waste? With nearly a year of lockdowns forcing us to stay home, we’ve been cooking more as well as ordering more takeaways for delivery. I certainly have been getting more creative in the kitchen and cooking more, so have noticed our food waste increase. I don’t like wasting food, but sometimes it is inevitable.
Here are my tips for reducing food waste at home.
Waste in Milton Keynes
By 2040, 80,000 tonnes of black sack waste is expected to be produced by households in Milton Keynes every year. That’s equivalent to filling Middleton Hall at thecentre:mk TEN TIMES each year! The same volume of waste is produced by businesses, shops and restaurants in the MK area.
As we already know, landfill is not a sustainable option for the disposal of waste. Landfill generates methane which contributes to climate change and it’s very harmful to the environment. Milton Keynes does a pretty good job of diverting waste from landfill, which will eventually prevent around 27.6 million cubic metres of landfill gas from being emitted each year. Our green wheelie bin scheme means that food waste doesn’t end up in landfill, it goes to a waste recovery park where it is converted into energy that can power our homes.
Nifty, huh?
We are all trying to do our bit to help the planet. So in addition to reusing and recycling, using our green wheelie bins is a really simple way that we can reduce our food waste and ensure it doesn’t end up in landfill. In addition to that, there are some really easy things that you can do to reduce your food waste at home.
Remember that small actions lead to big change!
How to reduce food waste at home
Use your scraps!
Yep, the vegetable peels and offcuts that you discard can actually be very valuable and delicious. You can use your scraps to make a tasty vegetable stock that you can use in soups, sauces and more. Instead of binning the scraps, add them to a freezer bag and once it’s full, boil the scraps in water, strain, and then you have a delicious stock packed with vitamins to use in your cooking. This article has some great tips on how to make your stock.
Nigella recommends using your vegetable peels to make crisps which is something I hadn’t thought of before, and it’s such a great idea! Simply toss potato, parsnip or sweet potato peels in olive oil, add some salt and paprika, and bake at 200C until crispy. They make a great little snack and give you something to munch on whilst you finish cooking dinner.
Buy what you need
One of the key ways to reduce food waste is to buy what you need in the first place. We create a weekly meal plan then create our shopping list based on the meal plan. This means we never have too many leftovers from our weekday meals and ensures we don’t have any extra food or ingredients we don’t need.
Recipe boxes like Gousto [AD Affiliate Link – Get 50% off your first box!] are a good way to do this if you’re lacking inspiration or are short on time. They pack exactly what you need into the box, so there are rarely any leftovers.
Use waste-reducing apps like OLIO and Too Good To Go
There are some brilliant apps that help you to reduce food waste within the local community.
OLIO connects neighbours with each other and with local business so that surplus food can be shared not thrown away. You simply take a photo of the item you have going spare and someone local to you can take it off your hands for free. So handy, right?
And if you’re someone who loves a bit of a bargain, you’ll love Too Good To Go. Local shops and restaurants use Too Good To Go to share surplus food they can’t sell (but is still perfectly good to eat) You can get your hands on really cheap food that is still delicious. Too Good To Go has saved 61.1 million meals all over the world since 2016!
Freeze your leftovers
A no brainer for many of us, but it’s surprising how much you can safely freeze for later. I am a big fan of freezing extra portions for later. Just make sure you’re clued up on how long each item can be frozen for. Bag or box it up, clearly label it and enjoy later. I like to use silicone reusable bags like these as they stack really well in the freezer and aren’t as bulky as plastic tubs. I also LOVE books like Nigella’s ‘Eat Sleep Repeat’ and ‘Time To Eat’ by Nadia Hussain – both have great instructions on how you can freeze dishes you might not have perceived as freezable
Create a compost bin at home
If you’re partial to a bit of gardening, creating a compost bin at home is a great way to create nutritious fertiliser for your plants. You can’t compost cooked food, but vegetable peels and uncoated cardboard can be composted. MK Council has a guide to home composting on its website, as well as discounted bins you can buy from their partner.
Keep your green wheelie bin clean
For all other food waste you can’t or compost, you should use the green wheelie bin that is supplied to you by Milton Keynes Council. As well as all garden waste, here are just come of the things you can put in the green bin: Cooked or raw meat and bones, fish, fruit and vegetables, bread, tea bags and loose tea and coffee, plate scrapings, mouldy food, and pet food. You can find a full list on MK Council’s website.
We are regular users of our green bin but as the warmer months approach, the green bin can get pretty disgusting. I am still scarred by a mega maggot incident from a few years ago… *shudders* so a clean green bin is essential in my eyes – a cleaner bin is a better used bin (not to mention being MUCH more hygienic)
CleanerBins can clean your green wheelie bin once a month for less than the price of a coffee and cake. Six cleans start at £24 which is a small price to pay for a bin that doesn’t become maggot HQ.
Book six bin cleans with CleanerBins and quote SOPHIE ETC, to get a free bin clean – you’re welcome!
About Cleaner Bins
CleanerBins provide a professional wheelie bin cleaning service, trusted by your neighbours for over 10 years. Cleaning the bin is a job that is often overlooked but quickly becomes a necessity. CleanerBins is MK’s longest-serving bin cleaning service for domestic and commercial waste containers Let them do the dirty work so you don’t have to!
I don’t know if our green wheelie bin had ever been cleaned before CleanerBins got their hands on it, but thankfully they were able to get rid of all the rotten much that will eventually start to smell as the weather warms up. All we needed to do was leave our bin outside ready to be cleaned. Once it’s cleaned, a sticker gets put on your bin so they can identify it for next time. I’m booking our green bin in for the summer months to make sure it stays clean.
To book your bin clean, visit www.cleanerbins.com
What are your top tips for reducing food waste? And when was the last time you had your bin cleaned?
