How do you feel when you throw away food? Is it a gut-wrenching, guilt-inducing event or do you not even notice? I tend to feel awful about waste in general, especially food waste. I’m forever going through the fridge, eating old bits of ham, just so as to make sure nothing goes in the bin.
Take last night for instance…
We are due a food shop, but I was loathe to buy new things when we had so many odd bits and pieces that needed using. I found a bagel which only had a tiny bit of mould on it, so I cut that off. There were four random, loose fish fingers in the freezer too – job done! Fish finger sandwich for Belle for tea.
Yum!
(Don’t tell her about the mould.)
The fact is though that a shocking SEVEN MILLION TONNES of food waste is generated by UK households every year and we need to do whatever we can to reduce this, even if it does mean scraping off the odd bit of mould. Naturally, there are also other ways to help. Eagle dumpster rental in reading can be a good service to model after. When you have to throw something away, you can rest assured that it will at least go to the right place
It’s interesting to think about the difference between my attitude to food waste and Belle’s. A new report from Sainsbury’s actually showed that a lot of the increase in food waste has to do with the change in attitudes between generations. Think about your parents or grandparents, living in the post war era. They wouldn’t have stocked the fridge with dozens of yogurts and raspberries, ‘just in case’, only to throw them away when they got to their use by dates would they? No way.
I haven’t lived in that era, but I have lived through times when money has been tight as a family, and I do attach value to food. Does Belle have that same awareness of the cost involved in producing, transporting, storing and consuming food? Probably not.
According to the Sainsbury’s report, which surveyed 5,000 people, the younger generations are much more likely to have a ‘live to eat’ attitude to food – with food as a pleasurable activity in itself. With this comes higher shopping bills and more food waste. Older generations however are more likely to ‘eat to live’ and have correspondingly lower grocery bills and less waste.
To try to tackle the food waste mountain in the UK, Sainsbury’s has invested £10million into its Waste less, Save more initiative, helping shoppers reduce the amount of food they waste at home. The Waste less, Save more initiative also aims to encourage families to pass down skills and knowledge from generation to generation, so that younger people are better equipped to keep food waste to a minimum.
In a bid then to help get your kids involved in reducing food waste, I’ve come up with 17 super cool food waste hacks designed not just to educate younger family members, but to show them that reducing food waste can actually be fun: View Post