The Rubbish Diet Challenge: Week 3, Waste Not Want Not

Welcome to Week 3 of The Rubbish Diet Challenge, where this week I am taking you into the kitchen to find out how much food gets thrown in your bin.

Managing food waste is one of the most important areas of waste reduction. Not only has it huge potential for slimming your bin, but by reducing what you throw away can save you money and provide environmental rewards too.

According to WRAP's LoveFoodHateWaste campaign if we all stop wasting food we could have eaten, the CO2 impact is the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road. That's a startling statistic and when I first heard it, it really made my jaw drop in surprise.

So in Week 3, I will be revealing what type of food waster I was, in the hope that even the least careful of folk will see that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And I've included tricks for using up leftovers as well as advice about portions and ways of dealing with waste if you just can't simply eat any more.

And if you're a stranger to the kitchen with the exception of visiting the microwave, I hope to inspire you to grab your apron, or lab coat and start experimenting with food. There's so much more to being a rubbish cook, than simply being rubbish in the kitchen. You never know, you may even be tempted to have a go at making pasta or bread as an alternative way to cut down on packaging.

So if you're ready to crack on with Week 3 of the Rubbish Diet Challenge, find out what you're in for at:

http://tinyurl.com/TheRubbishDietWeek3

Oh and I almost forgot, I did a spot of reminiscing today and if you didn't catch it at the time, here's one of the recordings I did for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour a couple of years ago.



STOP PRESS

iPhone users - there's an exciting new app available from www.wasteawarelovefood.org.uk, which will help you plan your meals from your phone with a recipe finder and portion planner. You can download it directly from the itunes store.

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There are more ways than one to avoid food waste

Christmas is a time when food waste can sneak up from behind faster than can you can say boo to the cooked goose on your festive table.

Yesterday, I discussed how we've handled our leftovers this year and I'm pleased to add that apart from a few vegetables, there is now nothing left from our Christmas dinner and with the time on my hands I even managed to make a crumble from the plums that have been sitting in our fridge since autumn.

If you're looking for other ideas on what to do with all the gubbings in your fridge, as well as the the LoveFoodHateWaste recipes, I can recommend a visit to Mrs Green over at MyZeroWaste who has some fantastic suggestions for sorting out your turkey.

And if you prefer to spend your evenings curled up under the blanket with a book rather than huddled around your computer, you'll do well to check out this fabulous book by Kate Colquhoun. Entitled The Thrifty Cookbook, 476 ways to eat well with leftovers, it offers excellent advice on turning old bread into croutons and even shows you how to make gnocci. For those who can't tear yourself away from taking your laptop into the kitchen, you'll be pleased to know there's even a website of the same name with lots of tips and free advice. You can find it at www.thethriftycook.co.uk.

Of course using up your cooked leftovers to create fantastic meals will do your bin the world of good this Christmas and should never be under-estimated when it comes to saving you cash.

However, there are some other options for managing potential food waste that you may like to consider too, which go beyond feeding the cat or dog, and here are just some of them.


1. Watch the birdie

The RSPB is always appealing for the public to feed garden birds, especially in Winter, and you may be surprised at how much of your Christmas food can be fed to our feathered visitors. Christmas cake and mince pie crumbs as well as more regular food such as rice, breakfast cereals, grated cheese, cooked potato and fruit will all help them join in your festive celebrations. However, the RSPB warns against giving birds cooked turkey fat, stating that it is highly dangerous as it can smear onto feathers and ruin the water-proofing and insulating qualities needed to keep them warm during the winter. For more information, visit http://www.rspb.org.uk

2. Support Food Banks

Using up cooked food or opened jars of food is one thing, but what about unopened food that you have no intention of using? It could be something you've been given as a gift or bought yourself only to find no-one else in the house likes it. Don't just throw it in the bin. That would be a real waste. If you have a local foodbank consider donating it instead.

The Haverhill Food Bank is one such community project, which was created to help local people in Suffolk, with the support of the Trussel Trust, who itself has launched a growing network of food banks around the UK to help feed people in crisis.

The initiative welcomes unopened and in-date tins of food amongst other products to help bridge the gap for those in need for three days until other agencies come to their aid. Anglia Food Bank, operated by the Newmarket charity Newmarket Open Door, also collects and distributes food to vulnerable people and supporting agencies throughout the region.

It may not always be practical or feasible to donate the odd item from your Christmas hamper, especially if you live miles away from your nearest Food Bank, but it could be worth getting in touch to find out if your local community could offer collective support.

Schools, churches and community groups often organise collections of food, so you may be able to help in this way and find a home for your unwanted jars and tins. If you don't know where your nearest food bank is, your local church might have the necessary information, especially as they often get involved in co-ordinating collections of this kind.


3. Share amongst your friends & family

If you open a packet or jar of something that you find is not to your taste, the natural reaction may be to throw it in the bin. Instead of just bunging it into landfill, ask your best friend if they'd like it, or take it around to a family member.

It may feel like an irrelevant offering, but when passing it on highlight that you don't want to waste things uneccesarily and that you've committed to reducing your food waste and the methane associated with it. However, be prepared to be the target of the most obvious jokes that come your way and keep smiling in the knowledge that you're not some mad acquaintance, but someone taking positive action in the right direction.


4. Don't compost too soon.

If you're a fan of composting and keen to reduce your rubbish this way, that's fabulous news. However, beware of composting too soon. Bananas that look worse for wear, as well as the odd bruised apple, can easily be classed as candidates for the compost. Consider making smoothies or banana cake instead and indeed apples can be juiced or chopped and made into crumble or apple cake. And don't forget broccoli stalks. I used to bung these in the compost but have recently discovered they can be tasty additions to soups. More hints and tips about using up fruit and vegetables that might be on their last legs, can be found at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com. You can save yourself stacks of cash.


The final hurdle - there are other ways to avoid landfill.

Of course, there comes a time when your only option is to throw some of your food away. You can save fruit & veg peelings from landfill by composting, either via your council service or through your own facilities at home, but did you know that you can divert your cooked food waste too?

It's not advised that you put untreated cooked food into your compost bin, but if you don't have a council food waste collection, there are still options available to you to avoid sending your waste to landfill. There is an associated cost with each of these options, but it's worth it if you can afford it and you'll also get the added benefit of nutrients being fed back into your garden.

A Wormery (vermicomposting) is a good start and makes great compost too. Wormeries are small enough to fit into the tiniest of gardens and accept all sorts of cooked food waste including pasta, rice, cereals as well as fruit and vegetable peelings. However, they should not be used for meat or fish waste and are also poor processors of citrus fruit peelings. Aside from that, they are very versatile and create a fun experience for children too. More information about composting and wormeries can be found at Recycle Now's Home Composting site, www.recyclenow.com/compost/

Bokashi bins are a fabulous alternative for anyone who wants to manage cooked food waste including meat and fish (and bones). A kit comprises a couple of specially adapted bins, with a nozzle for extracting liquid run-off (which itself can be diluted and used as plant feed). Food waste is managed by adding small layers to the bin and sprinkling Bokashi bran on top of each layer. Gradually the layers build up and are then left to ferment for a couple of weeks, before adding to a compost bin, wormery or simply buried in the ground. More info about Bokashi systems can be found at www.wigglywigglers.co.uk.

The Green Cone is a food digester that can be sited in a garden with sufficient drainage. It looks very much like a compost bin and accepts all sorts of food waste including cooked and raw meat as well as bones. More info about The Green Cone can be found at www.greencone.com.

Reducing food waste has become a major priority in the UK. With 8.3 million tonnes of food being thrown away by households each year, it has become a serious environmental issue. By taking measures to reduce what is wasted in the first place and avoiding landfill wastage, the CO2 savings could be the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road...

...and as for financial savings, a family with children could be saving as much as £680 a year.

I can certainly support that statement. By buying less, cooking smaller portions and reusing leftovers, we've already saved ourselves around £1000 during the last couple of years. And that goes for Christmas too. Our Christmas bills this year have significantly dropped in more ways than one.

I just wish I could see the same results on my hips!

As no-one else in the family really likes Christmas cake as much as I do, it looks like I'd better watch out.

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The Bokashi and the Beasties: The first live gig

A round of applause ladies and gentlemen for the latest, most talked about duo (well in Stanton village anyway)....

It's the main act, so please give it up for ...........

The Bokashi and the Beasties!



Yesterday, I was the warm-up act at Stanton Primary School, where I revealed the contents of my gorgeous rubbish bin to almost 60 children.



I had my volunteer bin sorters ...two very brave children who were happy to delve into the bin. For reassurance I should add, all items were deliberately added that morning.

Bizarrely, both the children's names began with a "kicking K"... which made it very easy to remember, especially as my name begins with the same letter too. (Apologies, but having a six year old, it is so easy to fall into Jolly Phonics).

Then we had my other helpers, who pretended to be the bins for all the sorted contents...

We had a "Curly C" to look after the Recycling
Another "Kicking K" to take care of the Composting
A "S" to sort out my squidgy fruit and veg.
And a "W" to look after the rubbish.

The boys and girls knew about recycling and were enthusiastic to vote on what we should do with each item, while I told the story of The Rubbish Diet and how, during one week in March, all I threw out was one plaster.

There were looks of surprise when the bin sorters delved into the bin and pulled out some dodgy looking fruit and vegetables, but we decided the wrinkled apple wasn't mouldy and could be eaten once peeled. The banana could be used in a banana cake and the tomato or carrots could be used to make soup.

After all the sorting, the boy in charge of the "rubbish" was left with just a piece of film from the Weetabix box.

Result! If this had been a real bin, there would have been hardly anything to have thrown away.

As the bin sorters were hard at work, there were calls of "eurggh" as we revealed the morning's leftover breakfast, which was some Weetabix, still in bowl (but wrapped in a plastic bag for safety)...

And that was the intro to the final act!

The floodlights were lit to reveal the one thing that has helped me to reduce my rubbish....

Yes the Bokashi itself.


I warned that it smelled a little and drained off some of the bokashi juice to a chorus of "what a pong".

It was agreed that it smelled a bit like cider (confirmed by the teachers not the children, I hasten to add).

The children then queued up to take a peek inside the bin, before heading in my direction to have a look at the beasties who eat the bokashi and turn it all into compost.




Yes, the lovely wriggly squiggly worms, all looking dandy in their portable bed of compost.

And there I was, wondering how I would fill a whole hour. As it was, I had nothing to worry about as the hour flew by.

The kids were great, so attentive, friendly and inquisitive and didn't eat me for breakfast after all...which is a good job really, because the next tour-date is this afternoon, this time at my son's school!

So without further ado...let's give another round of applause for The Bokashi and the Beasties as well as the children at Stanton Primary School in Suffolk, especially my wonderful helpers. Also a big "thank you" to Mr Goddard for inviting me along.

Extra notes for teachers or parents that might be looking in: Please note the contents of the Bokashi should not be placed in the brown wheelie bins for collection from the council. It is intended for use in a home compost bin or wormery. Anyone considering a kit would need two bokashi bins, plus a permanent supply of special EMs impregnated bran. Once full, the bokashi bin should be left for two weeks and the liquid drained off every few days, while you use the second bin. More links can be found on yesterday's post, which discusses food waste.
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Why I no longer send food waste to landfill

Yesterday I was invited by the Jonathan Vernon-Smith consumer show to join in the food waste discussion on BBC Three Counties Radio. If you're in time, you can catch it again on the listen again feature (about 2 hrs & 52 minutes in) and hear us laughing about out-of-date chocolate and taking microwave meals off to your friends if you've been invited for dinner ... all in an attempt to reduce food waste of course.

On a more serious note, food waste is a real hot topic at the moment, following research last year by WRAP, which revealed that a third of all food we buy is thrown away.

That's like buying six bags of fresh food at the supermarket and throwing two in the bin when you leave, just because you couldn't be bothered to take it home or you changed your plans just after you got past the checkout.

If someone told you they did that, you would probably think they were bonkers. Yet in the UK we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of wasted food per year and this startling figure includes 5,500 chickens that are bunged in the bin, with full packaging intact, everyday... yes you did read that right...EVERYDAY.

When you add the fact that that we don't just spend money buying all this food, we also pay more to throw it away, the picture of lunacy becomes bigger. Then there's the environmental damage, caused by rotting apples and other organic matter in landfill, creating 18 million tonnes of of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

Phew...all from thowing the odd bit of meat or banana skins in the bin!

Food waste has become a personal issue of mine, not because I have always been perfect in minimising waste, but because it used to be the main cause of having an overloaded and smelly old bin!

However over the course of slimming my bin, I have discovered a few tricks of the trade in managing to reduce my contribution to the landfill problem, so I thought it was worth revisiting the ideas.

1. Buying little and often: I am absolutely rubbish at forwarding planning and would find myself throwing things in the bin because they were out of date or had gone off, so I now buy more fresh produce and meat in smaller quantities as and when I need them, allowing me to cook as the mood takes me. This also means I can make a quick visit to the market and benefit from the best deals.

2. Buying in bulk: I'm a lady who falls by the wayside of temptation, so I buy essential toiletries and other items in bulk, reducing the need to make regular visits to the larger supermarkets. My life of buying an extra dozen things I didn't really need is now over and no longer relies on my poor willpower. I can hardly believe my visits to the supermarket were once a leisure activity...these days I always make a quick getaway.

3. Reducing portions: I've become more careful with portion sizes, only cooking what I know we will eat. We can always top up with something else if we're hungry, even if it's a slice of bread. As far as takeaways are concerned, curries are our downfall, but now we just share one dish and eat it all, rather than buying one each and wasting the leftovers.

4. Using up fresh leftovers: If I know there are going to leftovers, I put them aside and try and reuse them for another meal. For example a bolognese dish can be quickly turned into a chilli-con-carne, just by adding a few simple spices.

5. Feed the birds: With two kids, the trickiest thing for us is sometimes bread crusts. The birds now lap these up together with some other odds and ends. It is a real treat to see our new visitors in the garden and the children love spotting the different types of feathered friends.

6. Feeding the worms: Of course even with best efforts, there is always going to be some food waste and we don't have the benefit of a separate food waste collection service from our local authority. However we already had a composter which is good for uncooked fruit and vegetables and it produces just enough compost to mulch our garden every year.

We can't use the composter for cooked food waste because of the risk of vermin and with this in mind we got a couple of bokashi bins, which can be tucked away in the corner of our small kitchen. It allows us to add our plate scrapings (including meat and fish scraps), over which we sprinkle a layer of specially impregnated bran. When full, we leave it to ferment for a couple of weeks before putting it in the composter and the worms love it! It's like hosting a worm party!

We also have a wormery, which helps us cope with the odd emergency when we run out of our bokashi bran. However, it can't handle meat or fish. The children treat the wormery as pets and we do have to be careful about keeping the temperature right in winter, making sure they are cosy in their blanket. The wormery seems a popular choice for a fly gathering at the moment, but I've picked up some excellent advice from Wiggly Wigglers, which I will share very soon.

The one thing I have learned is that food waste is very personal. Some people are great at managing it without any help of garden gadgetry, others (like me) are not so great unless they can step up to a lifestyle overhaul and get the right toolkit in place.

And yes, I still have the odd mishap, as I am human after all, but the best bit is, I no longer have to bung my food waste in the landfill bin, which means it no longer gets heavy or smelly and leaves me with one less thing to worry about!

If you want to read more about how I've dealt with my own family's food waste, try the following posts: How to be a rubbish cook; Look at my lovely worms and Putting an end to food in landfill.

For examples of how other consumers are also making the change have a peek Mrs Green's gorgeous site http://myzerowaste.com/how-to-reduce-food-waste/
where she's got some excellent tips. Specific details from other Bokashi users, including some other composting techniques, can be found at The Big Sofa, Faites Simple and Simon Sherlock's site.

More background detail about food waste in general can be found at WRAP's research site as well as their Love Food Hate Waste website.


In the meantime, I've got to get my skates on...because this morning I am off to explain all this to a group of primary school children.... yep... 60 of them... now that seems more scary than the first day I came face-to-face with a bagfull of worms, or indeed the WRAP event last week!

60 kids, eh?!

Yikes!

There's a big risk they could eat me for breakfast. So if you don't hear from me soon, send in a rescue party!


ADDENDUM: - If you would like to hear a great "all things considered" review of Bokashi bins, then tune in to Emma's podcast at the Alternative Kitchen Garden. Thanks Emma, aka Fluffius Muppetus for sharing the link.
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The BBC, landfill and my own back garden

I know it's April 1st but I promise you this is no April Fool.

When I woke up yesterday morning I had no idea that by the evening I would have a BBC news team in my back garden, filming my recycling habits for today's Breakfast programme on BBC One.

Again, I know it's April Fool's Day, but the issue being covered is no joke. Today the landfill charge is being increased by £8 per tonne of waste in a major step by the government to encourage businesses and householders to recycle and compost more of their waste.

In financial terms, this means that the cost of waste disposal in the UK's landfill facilities will rise from £24 per tonne to £32 per tonne. Until now annual increases have been just £3 per tonne. However it appears likely that we will see further increases at the new level until at least 2010, when landfill tax is expected to reach £48 per tonne.

So it looks like there is something else to hit our pockets. Talk about kicking a man when he's already down and brow-beaten by other economic problems, but if our country has to meet the targets set by the European Landfill Directive, drastic action is needed.

If each and every one of us had to bury our own waste in our own back gardens, surely we would want to do something about reducing it well before the authorities come knocking on our door.

We are simply running out of space in the country's back garden, which we call landfill. Already this week we've seen Plymouth's landfill site close because it is full to capacity. The city's waste in now destined for alternative facilities in neighbouring Cornwall. Our local facilities in Suffolk are facing the same issues, with space expected to run out in six years time.

So it is no coincidence that more and more councils are choosing to change household waste collection to a bi-weekly service, with the aim of encouraging people to reduce their rubbish.

At the moment I don't mind paying the extra council tax that will need to be recovered to cope with the issue, as it will be a while yet before society gets used to having to reduce our levels of household and business waste. I just hope that some of the money collected by government is invested in improving recycling facilities to help alleviate the problems.

However, ask me the same question in a couple of years time when I might be a lot more hacked off if I have to pay for a share for my neighbours' waste to be dumped. I may not be so generous.

In the meantime, consumers should not become the "fall-guys" of waste management problems. The whole manufacturing and retail chain needs to demonstrate significant changes to help us reach the targets set by Europe. Councils across the UK also need to provide comprehensive recycling facilities that are both easy to use and effective. I feel lucky that our local authority offers excellent recycling services. I would certainly not be happy paying a local council for dumping my landfill waste on the basis of poor local facilities.

However, let's look on the bright side as it's not all doom and gloom. I recently highlighted on the Sustained website, the figures from Defra which reveal that non-recycled waste levels were lower in 2006/2007 than those recorded in 1983/1984. Having peaked in 2000 at 450 kilos per person, the annual figure for 2006/2007 was down to 351 kilos per person.

What this shows is that there are lots of folk out there who are already slimming their bins and having talked rubbish with so many others, I know there are plenty more people out there who would like to take proactive action too. We just need to capture their imagination and show them how easy it can be.

Anyway, if you're up early you'll see me briefly demonstrating my own recycling facilities on today's BBC Breakfast and later on News 24. Look closely and you may even get to see my lovely wormery. So it's definitely a case of the early bird catches the worm and all that.

Addendum: Have just come back from an interview at a Suffolk landfill site, which should also be on the BBC1 lunchtime news as well as other broadcasts throughout the day.

Useful sources:

More information on the 2008 budget and landfill tax can be found at Lets Recycle. Waste disposal statistics can be found at Defra.
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