Food waste challenge

To mark zero waste week Alchemic Kitchen launched the  food waste challenge as part of Your Food Needs You. Households across Liverpool have been given a food caddy, over a 3 week period we monitor their food waste and provide ideas to help participants reduce the amount of food they are chucking out.

 

The trends so far

Initial findings are showing an interesting trend. The households with the most environmentally friendly diets, i.e. more fruit and vegetables than meat, are creating a higher amount of food waste. The household who produced the highest amount of food waste (3.5kg) is predominantly vegetarian and cooked at home most nights. Their caddy was full of shavings, peelings and mostly the inedible parts of fruit and veg. In stark contrast the household with the most protein heavy diet only had 0.8 kg of food waste, this household frequently ate out and did not cook every night.

 

What should we be doing with food waste?

This would suggest that a switch towards a vegetarian diet will inherently produce more domestic waste. The question then becomes how we process that waste in way which minimises environmental damage. Are there ways in which we can encourage households to use up every part of the vegetable, for example cooking veg with the skin on rather than peeling? Do we need to think more about community compost schemes so that the energy from waste can be used to grow more produce locally?

Take part

These are questions we will be looking into further throughout the year long program. If you would like to take part, please get in touch with [email protected].