As we gear up to introduce our first household incentive scheme to reduce waste and increase recycling, which will go live in Bexley later this year, my transition to full blown waste nerd is becoming ever more evident.  At home I have taken to frugally using up all left-over food that might previously have found its way into the bin, as well as composting all our food waste with a zeal that surprises myself!  Food is such a basic thing, there’s something almost primeval about making sure nothing is needlessly wasted – our ancestors fought a daily struggle to feed themselves, just as many millions do in the developing world today, and I’ve found myself feeling quite deeply satisfied about trying to apply a zero waste approach to food. 

The annual International Compost Awareness Week will be celebrated from 1^st-7^th May and I think this is a great opportunity to focus on food waste.  Did you know that in the UK we throw away over 8.3 million tonnes of food every year, much of it perfectly edible?  In fact it has been estimated that if we ate all the food that could be eaten instead of chucking it out, this would have the same carbon impact as taking 1 in 4 cars off the UK’s roads. 

To help you  turn food waste into black gold that gardeners will drool over, we’ve got a great selection of wormeries and composters in our green shop.  I’ve just spread over two years of food compost around my borders and the thought of all that goodness seeping into the soil and helping to generate new growth is very satisfying.  I plan to get my kids out planting some vegetables and herbs with me shortly, and I hate to sound too corny, but that primeval feeling is there again as I think about the circle of life!

 Further References

How to reduce your food waste

Love Food, Hate Waste

Reducing food waste could lift 1 million out of starvation