WRAP has recommended using three tools to help you reduce food waste this Christmas. They include the portion planner, an A to Z storage guide and swaptions.
Food waste
Each year in the UK, approximately 6.6 million tonnes of food go to waste from our homes over the twelve months. This is by far the most significant amount of food waste overall, with 70% of the UK’s total food waste coming from our own homes.
This costs households around £14 billion a year, or £730 for an average family. It produces 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, and what’s more, a whopping 4.5 million tonnes is food that could have been eaten – 2 million tonnes of which wasn’t used in time.
Of this annual total food waste, the amount of poultry thrown away in one year could make 800 million Boxing Day curries. Enough potatoes are binned each year to make roasties for Christmas Day for the whole country, for 48 years. And the amount of carrots thrown away every year by UK homes could feed Santa’s nine reindeers a carrot a day, for nearly 500,000 years!
Portion planner
Each Christmas, thousands of households take time during the festive break to log on to Love Food Hate Waste to look for a tasty recipes to stop leftover festive foods going to waste, and for tips on how to freeze and reuse uneaten items with the annual Ultimate guide to Christmas food planning.
Boxing Day is the busiest day for home chefs looking for inspiration to transform leftovers into tasty stomach fillers. Searches range from recipe ideas to use up classic Christmas staples, to guidance on freezing leftover meat.
The Love Food Hate Waste Portion Planner can help save money by guiding people towards the best number of parsnips and other trimmings to serve, no matter the number of guests.
A to Z storage guide
he A to Z Storage Guide is the best Christmas present in terms of helping to keep any food in top condition for as long as possible, with WRAP showing earlier this year that fresh produce can stay fresher for longer in the fridge. With refrigerated apples lasting two and a half months longer than those in a fruit bowl.
Poultry is number eight in the top ten most wasted foods in the UK. 100,000 tonnes of poultry end up in the bin every year. Most is chicken, the nation’s favourite meat, but at Christmas it is all about turkey.
Leftover turkey can be stored in the fridge for up to two days, but turkeys usually produce more than a couple of days’ worth of leftovers. Freeze the excess turkey and defrost either in the fridge or using the microwave on the defrost setting directly before re-heating. The golden rule? Only re-heat once.
Swaptions
Fresh vegetables and salad are the most wasted food group in the UK. We waste 1.3 million tonnes of perfectly good fresh veggies and salads every year, costing £2.7 billion. Swapping highly wasted fresh foods for frozen options (’swaptions’) could help to reduce food waste – they last for months and you can use as much as you need when you need it.
Frozen vegetables (including your brussell sprouts) can be cooked from frozen. Top tip - when preparing fresh veg for freezing, blanch in boiling water for a few minutes and plunge into cold water before freezing.