Save more money with the Food Savvy challenge!

Food Savvy I hear you ask? What is that?

In October last year, I received an email from the environmental charity Hubbub asking if I would be interested in joining their campaign to reduce food waste at home. Well, of course, this ties in perfectly with everything we are trying to achieve at Life Diet Health: creating meals from scratch; using fresh seasonal produce; making recipes using up what is available; growing our own produce and also reducing plastic use!

So Hubbub have several campaigns which collaborate with other groups or individuals and they have partnered with Suffolk County Council and Norfolk County Council to create Food Savvy. Food Savvy is a campaign to cut food waste in Suffolk and Norfolk and has its own Food Savvy website full of tips, tricks and details of how to take part in the #foodsavvy challenge yourself.

Have you even considered where all your food waste and plastic go? Have you wondered how much we accumulate together? These statistics are a big staggering…

That’s 113,000 tonnes of food waste per year just in two counties! costing £12.6 million! That’s insane when it could be easily reduced or avoided! £810 waste per household per year? That is a massive saving potentially…

So, as a Food Savvy ambassador, I am taking part in this challenge and I hope you will join me (no excuses that you live in Germany, Italy, Serbia, USA, London, The Midlands, Lincolnshire, Isle of Wight or anywhere other than Suffolk and Norfolk 😛 !) as we could all do with helping the environment and of course saving some money right?!

The first week of the challenge (Monday 3rd February until Sunday 9th February 2020) is used as a base week to see what you are using already. The idea is to weigh all your ‘avoidable’ food waste! Avoidable is the key word here… whilst we should be mindful about unavoidable food waste, for the purposes of this challenge, tea-bags, fruit & vegetable peelings or skins are not included (they can be composted if they are plastic and wax free)!

Avoidable food waste includes: anything left on your plate when you’ve finished eating that you’re putting in the bin; the bowls of oddments in the fridge that you’ve decided have been there too long and need throwing out; the well-intended fruit in the fruit bowl which has gone all wrinkly and brown; the reduced foods you brought as they were cheap then didn’t eat before the use by date; the packets and jars at the back of the cupboard you found when having a clear out that are years old; the new product you wanted to try but didn’t like and threw away; the food you burnt as you stopped paying attention and threw away as it was charcoal, and the food you accidentally over salted, over sweetened, added too much chilli to etc. that also went in the bin! Now can you see where the £810 comes from?! The first week is just about monitoring it though! Of course, it’s ideal to get the whole family involved though as we ALL need to be mindful of waste!

Next comes the single use plastics! Now, as this is a food challenge, this is specifically plastic from foodstuffs, but this week again is just for monitoring what you currently use! The obvious single use plastics are plastic drinks bottles and coffee cups, then there’s the straws and lids on drinks (and probably plastic wrap on the straws too)! If you open your fridge you will likely find vegetables in plastic bags, fruits in plastic containers, milk in plastic cartons, cheese in plastic wraps, breads or pastries in plastic bags, yogurts in plastic pots, meats in plastic trays and eggs in plastic boxes. The freezer can be just as bad, with plastic packaging inside all those innocent looking cardboard boxes! Frozen vegetables in plastic bags and fruits for your smoothies the same. Plastic tubs for ice-cream, fish in plastic wrap, meats in polystyrene trays and cling film too! Dare we look in the cupboards or pantry and find plastic cereal bags, more drinks bottles, pastas and rice in plastic bags, noodles in plastic pots, sauces and spices with plastic lids, plastic packets for easy ready to make desserts, or sauces or just about anything! That is really a lot of single use plastic out there! Then of course, there’s all the bits of plastic you buy and eat on the go! Do you pick up lunch when you’re out? Sandwiches in plastic boxes, salads in plastic pots, crisps in plastic packets, chocolate in a plastic wrapper? Remember though, the first week is about monitoring! Record it all – or rinse it out and store it all for an end of first week picture which we’ll be sharing next week!

So, I am taking this challenge to see how well we are doing so far and to see if we can improve on that! I know that we’ve already made a LOT of changes in our household but there are so many more to make! Plus, everyone in the household needs to be involved so this is where my challenge really becomes a challenge! If I can get my boys using their reusable bottles and cups instead of buying drinks in plastic bottles and disposable cups, then my challenge will be complete! 😀

Remember, week 1 is all about monitoring to get a baseline of what is your normal – everyone has food waste and plastic waste so please just record it all this week without changing your habits! There are mini challenges within the challenge too which I’ll be revealing soon! 🙂 Make sure you’re subscribed to get all our updates, to find out how we’re getting on and see what we’ve learnt and saved!

Will you join us in reducing food waste and single use plastic?

Do you have any tips, ideas or suggestions?

Join the conversation below and let’s get this food waste problem sorted! 😀