It's Food Waste Awareness Week! 5 Tips To Reduce Your Food Waste, Win Don't Bin

It's Food Action Week this week! Win. Don’t Bin.

Each year the campaign aims to raise awareness in changing consumers behavior surrounding food waste.  Providing ideas about how we can improve our household food waste, minimise our food shopping bills and in turn decrease the pressure on our environment. 

This year, they are focusing specifically on how to use up leftovers, and eradicate the typical wastage of small bits and bobs that end up going in the bin.  A huge passion of ours at the deli, we practice it in everything we do; meaning we rarely have too much waste.  A lot of the time our customers don’t even realise we do these things - so we’ve highlighted some of them below!   We’ve also pulled together our top tips of easy steps you can make at home to try and eliminate your everyday waste. 

1. Plan your shops and don’t go when you’re hungry!

If you plan your meals in advance you’re less likely to deviate when you’re in the supermarket, and more importantly be tempted by unnecessary deals.  Before you go look in your fridge, cupboards and freezers to double check what you actually need. 

Really try to not go when you’re hungry, you’ll make poor purchasing decisions and buy too much. Once you get home, take the extra time to portion your meat / fish / bread and put it in the freezer to last longer. 

2. Freeze leftovers / infuse ice cubes

An obvious but easy option, if you know you’re not going to be in to eat for the next couple of nights, remember to freeze rather than put in the fridge where it will more than likely end up in the bin. And why not pop it in a recycled tub and save on plastic waste too? 

Another great tip is to freeze your left over lemon / lime juices and herbs. Pop them out for great taste in your g+t’s, add to stock and dressings. 

3. Chuck it in!

What’s the worst that can happen - if you’ve got ½ an onion, some wilted spinach or slightly soft carrots; they’re going to be fine once they’ve been cooked or roasted. A go to idea for a pasta sauce is to roast up all your veggies and put into a nutribullet / blender with some chopped tomatoes, stock, worcester sauce and wine. Speedy, really cheap and nutritious. 

4. Use everything

Try to use the whole vegetable, from carrot tops to cauliflower leaves, most of them can be used in a sauce, curry, dip or paste. - see our reel about 5 different ways you can use a cauliflower. Any off cuts of veg, like the browning peels of a leek, can be boiled down into a hearty stock and stored in the freezer until you need to use it!

5. Practice the sniff test

Labelling can be confusing.  Use by date is about safety and should not be used after that date so prioritise eating those first after a food shop.  Best before date means the food is still safe to eat but the quality might have diminished.  Check whether it looks and smells ok, and then it should be fine to eat.

Some of the things we do at the deli -

• Our menu allows you to choose how much or little you want, meaning we have very little waste that comes back from your plate
• We plan our menus around what is seasonal and try to use as much of the produce as possible - in our homemade stocks, soups and dips.
• We are careful with our waste disposal, with 5 different categories - recycling, glass, tetra, food and general wate.
• We work closely with our suppliers to make sure we only order what we need.
• We work with too good to go, so when we do have leftovers at the end of the day we can sell it on at a discounted price. Sign up to today to see lots of local businesses doing the same thing.
• Staff are encouraged to take home anything we can’t sell at the end of the day!