Love Food Hate Waste
Around a quarter of all the food we buy ends up being thrown away, when most of it could have been eaten. Imagine buying four bags of food and throwing one away!
Below you will find information about Hackney Council's 'Love Food Hate Waste' campaign and advice about home composting. You can also download a fantastic free recipe book, 'The Food Lovers Cookbook'.
Love Food Hate Waste Campaign
To reduce food waste, Hackney Council and other North London organisations are running a campaign called 'Love Food Hate Waste'.
The campaign includes roadshows, workshops, online food waste diaries, local advertising and competitions. The aim of this campaign is to reduce around 9,000 tonnes of food waste by March 2011. That's the equivalent weight of nearly 1,140 double decker buses!
To help reduce your food bill and help the environment just visit the Love Food Hate Waste website for lots of tasty recipes and information about:
- getting portion sizes just right
- planning meals
- stocking up on store cupboard essentials
- understanding 'best before' and 'use by' dates
- using leftovers and foods that we usually waste
- storing different types of food to prevent them going to waste.
Turn your food waste into compost
If you have a garden or balcony there are various council subsidised wormeries and food digesters that will help you compost some waste food items. Find out more about composting.
Food recycling
Hackney Council provides various services to enable you to recycle your food waste. Find out more about:
The Food Lovers Cookbook
A cookery book featuring winning recipes from residents and restaurants across north London has been produced as a result of recipe competition to showcase a range of sizzling meals and snacks made from leftovers.
The cookbook gives leftovers including old pasta, unused bread and even old tea bags a new lease of life as they are transformed into a series of starters, mains and desserts by 26 budding chefs from across north London.
Download a free copy of 'The Food Lovers Cookbook' now.
You can also request a free copy by emailing Ander.Zabala@hackney.gov.uk.
Why reducing food waste is important
Wasting food is not only a waste of money - a family of four throws away an average of £480 worth of food a year - but it is also very bad for the environment.
Producing, storing and getting the food to our homes uses a lot of energy. It's been calculated that if we stopped wasting all this food, we would save the equivalent of at least 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That's equivalent to taking 1 in 4 cars off UK roads.
Most of this food reaches landfill sites where it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is twenty times more powerful than CO2.
Page updated: 24 Jan 2011
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