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Spooky Tips to Save Food Waste __________ Guest Article by Martina Glasson The Norfolk County Council Waste Team |
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Editor’s note: We are pleased to give you tips this week from the Norfolk County Council Waste team – and remember: if we waste less, we reduce our carbon footprint – and save money. Furthermore, we reduce pollution which is particularly true of food waste. |
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Martina, who wrote this tip, originally trained as a teacher, and joined the waste team in 2004 delivering a waste education project. Since then she has been involved with a variety of waste reduction and recycling initiatives and is currently leading on a food waste reduction project called Food Savvy. This is a partnership project between Norfolk County Council, the Suffolk Waste Partnership and the environmental charity Hubbub. She also supports the Food Savvy Champions, a group of trained volunteers who take the Food Savvy message into the community. _________ |
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Get Food Savvy
What’s scarier than witches, ghosts and ghouls at Halloween? How about the 18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin that ends up in the bin each year. That’s the same weight as 1,500 double decker buses! Whilst most people know they can use the flesh of the pumpkin, the slimy stuff in the middle hardly gets a look in. But put it in a pan with plenty of water, then boil to make a thin broth and voilà, you have a fabulous base for soups. Here are some other foods you might not know you can eat – from banana skins to cauliflower stalks. |
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Eating seasonally Pumpkins are a wonderful seasonal vegetable. However, sometimes it is hard to know which foods are in season in the UK, particularly when there is so much available on supermarket shelves throughout the year. Locally produced seasonal food is tasty and often more affordable as it has travelled fewer miles. Here is our simple month by month guide to seasonal eating. We also run seasonal food campaigns and our next one is called “Eat your guts out” which aims to help people make the most of their pumpkins. Please encourage your community to follow us on Food Savvy Norfolk Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for the latest recipe ideas and food saving tips. . |
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Squash food waste It’s not just about pumpkins, with UK households wasting 6.6 million tonnes of food each year, it’s time to be Food Savvy all year round. Here are our top three tips to get you started:
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Community Fridges Another initiative that helps combat food waste is Community Fridges where surplus food from both local businesses and individuals is shared in the community. This also provides easy access to fresh, nutritious food for everyone. Fortunately we have a large network of Community Fridges in Norfolk and if there is one near you, please do support them. Interested in setting one up? Email us at [email protected]. Food Savvy Champions
Our Food Savvy Champions are trained volunteers who feel passionate about food. They share their knowledge with the community in a variety of ways and although the current situation doesn’t allow them to attend events and give talks in person, they can write articles for magazines and newsletters or may be able to do an online workshop. . . If you would like help from one of our volunteers or to become a volunteer yourself, please email [email protected]. _________
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That was fun ? – we will be having many more tips like this from the waste reduction team. If you Google “seasonal eating chart uk” you will find more charts. And of course, we must remember to buy local foods to cut our carbon footprints yet more – but make sure you don’t drive long distances to get them; also remember that some imported foods such as bananas, oranges, pineapples etc have very small carbon footprints – look at Professor Mike Berners-Lee’s book “How Bad are Bananas’ for the facts. Finally – here are two extra links from the team.
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With kind regards John W Pennell Chairman: Well-Being Initiative Task Force Norfolk Association of Local Councils Limited (Trading as Norfolk ALC) Our Privacy Policy, which outlines personal information we collect, why we collect it, and how we use it, can be viewed here. |
