Welcome to National Zero Waste Week!

Filed in Blog by on September 6, 2010 8 Comments
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Mrs Green's food waste tool!

Mrs Green's food waste tool!

Welcome lovelies; I’m so excited to be sharing this week with you. Celebrity chef Brian Turner CBE says “I’m a great supporter of National Zero Waste Week. I think it’s a wonderful idea and everyone should give join in. Once you’ve done a week, then it’s only another 51 to go!”

Eeek, you’d better get working then!

I know we all have our own unique ways of doing things and I want to kick off by sharing one of the food waste busting tools I use at Chez Green. Many of you have talked about having a whiteboard or similar on your freezers to avoid UFO (unidentified Frozen objects). While I’m not quite organised enough to have one of those yet, I do have one for the ‘fridge and fruit bowl contents.

It’s next to the kitchen and is roughly divided into 4 sections:

  • The food I have that needs using up within the next few days.
  • A plan of our commitments that week so I know if meals need to be quick and convenient or if we have friends eating with us.
  • Ideas for meals (to use up the food and fit in with our timing plans).
  • A shopping list which I write down as we run out of things.

Take a look at the video below which shows our whiteboard in all its glory and gives me the opportunity to be a weathergirl with sweeping hand movements.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9UsXUgVk5Q

What about you? What tools do you use to help prevent food waste in your homes?

Don’t forget – there are prizes to be won this week. Sign up on our zero waste week page, pledge to reduce your food waste then come back during the week and tell us how you are getting on. One winner will get a £50 voucher from LUSH and another will get a £50 from Natural Collection.

This afternoon, you’ll learn some secrets from Brian Turner about his ‘compost while you cook’ values and you’ll be able to discover one of his favourite ‘zero waste’ meals.

Meanwhile, over in Suffolk, Mrs A will be eating at Saints Cafe where they will be creating her a meal from food that would otherwise have been binned.
At the Cafe Direct Headquarters, Whitney, who wrote one of our popular posts about 11 ways to reuse coffee grounds, will be telling us how she plans to use up her food to reduce waste.
Rachel, from Abel and Cole has pledged not to waste a single gram of food – take a look at her blog this week to see how she gets on.

National Zero Waste Week is sponsored by Tetra Pak. Schools and businesses can now recycle their cartons too. Click here for more information.

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About the Author ()

I am a long time supporter of the Green and Sustainable lifestyle. After being caught in the Boscastle floods in 2004, our family begun a journey to respect and promote the importance of Earth's fragile ecosystem, that focussed on reducing waste. Inspired by the beauty and resourcefulness of this wonderful planet, I have published numerous magazine articles on green issues and the author of four books.

Comments (8)

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  1. It’s wonderful to know that I’m not the only one that obsessively records food movements in and around a whiteboard 🙂 Super idea!

  2. Kate says:

    Hello from the U.S.! I am participating in your Zero Waste Week, thereby helping to make it (Inter)National Zero Waste Week. 🙂 I have just started canning to reduce waste…so far I have saved several cucumbers, a large bag of pears and 4 pecks of tomatoes from my compost, and saved these things so I can enjoy seasonally produced food this winter, without even needing to use resources to keep them continually fresh for me! As you can tell I am disproportionally proud of my very new skill. A freezer was prohibitively expensive this season but next spring when things start to be fresh again we plan to invest in one, maybe with a white board; that’s a brilliant idea. Just wanted to add that I recently found your website and find it inspiring and very helpful. I also hope to start recyling my chip bags (umm…crisp packets) using the outlet you suggested. Thanks for bringing all this information to the table.

  3. ah, food, a crime to waste it! so here are three words to practice:
    CASSEROLE:
    cube meats or veges; add some filler pasta, rice or potato to it; an egg and some milk to shape it and you have the next entree.
    SOUP:
    if at first it was great, wait till you grind it in the blender to release flavors..soupe du jour is the sum total of all aromas. think nutritious.
    COMPOTE:
    fruits threatening to run away? cut all bad parts for compost, boil all good pulp with a half cup of water, a half cup of brown sugar or a few spoons of honey, pinch of salt, or cinnamon, dab of butter–mixed fruit dessert…

    all these can be frozen or canned in jars.

    a home grinder can disguise leftover meats for sandwich spread/ pate.
    a blender can hide soggy carrots and limp celery along with pumpkin mush or tired squash..presto–soup! bon appetit rachel and zero W friends

  4. Mrs Green says:

    @Julie Gibbons: Hahaha 😀 it makes SUCH a difference to the amount of food that gets thrown away to spend 10 minutes organising this on a Sunday evening 🙂

    @Kate: Hi Kate, welcome to the site and I’m so pleased to have you on board over in the US! You’ve done amazingly with all your preserving; I’m not surprised you feel proud 🙂 Keep up the great work and I look forward to hearing how you get on throughout the week 🙂

    @nadine sellers: loving your sandwich spread idea as these are so expensive for what you get.. I’ll have a go at that 🙂

  5. Philip Booth says:

    How did I miss the beginning of the week – no food waste to date – hope lots more visit the site this week and get the habit!

  6. Kate says:

    As an update–when I canned diced tomatoes today I tried using the skins and discarded bits (as I read elsewhere on this website) to make stock to put in as the liquid, then added it to my compost pile as usual.

  7. Mrs Green says:

    @Philip Booth: Hey Philip; great to see you – you’ve been quiet lately. Hope all is well and you enjoy the week

    @Kate: Great that you are reusing the skins and other discarded bits too – they really make a difference 🙂 Was the canning a success?

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