Save food, save money, save the planet | Tenant news

With food bills soaring and climate doom stories in the media, is there a way we can help save the planet and our wallets at the same time? Our Interim Head of Communications, James Simpson thinks there is with these top tips.

Food waste produces a tenth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If it were a country, wasted food would produce more greenhouse gases than the UK, India, and Canada combined. And that’s not counting for the energy used in making food, just the impact of our waste rotting away.

Here are seven tips to reduce your food waste, save you money, and save the planet. By putting these into practice, I cut my family’s food bills by an eighth. So for every eight pounds I spent in 2021, I now spend seven. And that adds up.

Record your food waste

If you need an incentive, try writing down everything you throw away for two weeks. Make sure you clean out the fridge during that time; no cheating! Then add it up. How much food are you wasting? How much money did you throw in the bin?

Plan for two or three weeks’ meals

If you’ve ever planned your meals, you’ll know that you end up buying less food when you plan. But have you ever tried planning two or three weeks’ food in advance? By planning further ahead, you can better use the freezer, roasts etc.

Store food smartly

Certain foods can be stored for a long time, if you change the way you store them. Try these tips:

• Label everything. Even the little pots of leftovers. Put a date on them too.
• Keep onions and potatoes away from each other
• Slice bread, then freeze it on the day of purchase. It toasts just as well from frozen, and you lock in the first-day freshness. Or make a ham sandwich using your frozen bread. The bread will defrost by lunchtime and keep the ham cold and safe through the morning.
• Store apples in the salad drawer. An apple can last up to two months in the fridge. If you prefer eating them at room temperature, it only takes a couple of hours to warm up.

For more ideas, try https://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/article/learn-how-store-your-food

Invest in ethylene absorbers

It took me a while to get my head around this one, but it works. You probably already know that you shouldn’t store bananas in the fruit bowl. The reason is that bananas give off lots of a gas called ethylene. Ethylene sinks to the bottom of the bowl and makes things rot. All fruit and veg give off ethylene, even in the salad drawer.

The good news is you can buy a tiny patch called an ethylene absorber and put one in the salad drawer in the fridge, and one in the fruit bowl.

Restaurants have been using them for years. They don’t cost much, and they last a few months. When I put mine in, the lifespan of lettuce in the salad drawer went up to two weeks. My fruit stayed fresher for ages: less rotten food, less wasted money.

Switch one or two meals per week to meat-free

I know this is a big one. For many of us – me included – the idea of dropping meat from a meal is a HUGE deal. But there are three excellent reasons to give it a go:

• You will probably live longer. Research shows that cutting out meat just once a week will reduce the risk of heart disease and various forms of cancer.
• Your carbon emissions will be far lower: Swapping just one meat dish for a plant-based one saves greenhouse gas emissions that are equivalent to the energy used to charge your phone for two years. Imagine what would happen if you swapped one meal each week.
• Pound for pound, veg is half the price of meat.

Share a roast with friends

Even though meat is one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters, the traditional Sunday roast is the best food-saving meal you can cook. A decent roast can give you meat for two more meals. And here are three tricks to make it go further:

• Put in loads of veg. Celeriac, sweet potatoes, carrots (choose the thick ones), and beetroot can all be chopped up and lobbed in with the roast potatoes.
• Big chickens are your friends. Sure, they take longer to cook, but they are comparatively cheap and will save you cooking meat later in the week.
• Share your roast with friends. With a bit of luck, they will invite you back. That’s a whole meal saved, just for cooking a little extra.   

Switch from fresh to frozen

Frozen foods lock in a lot of the nutrition and the freshness. Frozen fish, for example, is often frozen within hours of being caught. Defrost it gently (i.e. slowly in the fridge, rather than the microwave), and it will often be better than the fish counter. In Japan, they are notoriously fussy about the quality of their fish, yet every fish that goes on a piece of sushi is frozen first, which makes you think.

Do you have any money saving tips you’d like to share with other Habinteg households? Drop us an email at comms@habinteg.org.uk.