‘Hypocritical’ millennials are the worst for wasting food
With Britain’s food waste at record levels, Eleanor Steafel explains how you can use every last scrap in the fridge — and enjoy it
HYPOCRITICAL millennials are the worst age group for throwing away food, and need to rethink their approach to help combat climate change, the Government’s food waste champion has warned.
Ben Elliott said those aged 18 to 34 were the most passionate about the environment yet were also the worst food wasters. Figures from Wrap, the charity advising Government on tackling waste, found 18 to 34-year-olds wasted 49 per cent more food and drink in an average week than pensioner households. Those aged 35 to 64 wasted 33 per cent more than over-65s.
“The generation that is most shrill environmentally is millennials. Even though they are brilliant in campaigning for climate change, they are hopeless at tackling food waste,” said Mr Elliott, who has been charged with leading the Government’s campaign to reduce food waste by half by 2030.
He blamed their propensity to shop more frequently, use of delivery apps for takeaway food and rising consumerism for making them more “divorced” from saving food than other generations.
“I am 43. I was brought up by a parent scarred by rationing. We would sit around the table and if we didn’t eat everything, my mother was so upset we would have to eat it the next day. Now food is so cheap, it has become a throwaway society,” said Mr Elliott.
Asked if they were hypocritical, he said “some of them are hypocritical”. He added that they needed to think “a little differently” about how they filled their shopping baskets and recognise there was an associated environmental cost to food waste.
The 10 million tons of food wasted each year generates 22 million tons of greenhouse gases in growing, producing, transporting and packaging, according to Dr Emily Shuckburgh, an Antarctic Survey climate scientist. This is equivalent to the CO2 generated annually by the UK’S HGV vehicles.
The disclosures were made at a symposium yesterday attended by 300 food firms, organisations and chefs.
There is no one who can make a chicken last longer than my mother. Where others look in their fridge on a Monday morning and see the tired wreckage of a Sunday roast, she sees the potential for a week of soup, sandwiches, risotto and bubble and squeak.
Nose-to-tail, use-every-last-scrap cooking became terribly trendy for restauranters a few years ago (often an opportunity to serve croquettes made from various bits of offal, rather than a truly noble attempt at sustainability) but with the amount of food currently being thrown away in British households and food outlets every year, the need for the rest of us to tackle our food waste has never been so important.
Some of Britain’s biggest retailers have pledged to halve food waste by 2030 by selling smaller portions and offering discounts on products sold after their best-before date. Writing in Monday’s Daily
Telegraph, Ben Elliot, the Government’s food waste champion, said Britain was in the midst of a “food waste epidemic”, with
£20 billion of food binned annually, averaging £500 a year per household.
According to Wrap, the campaigning waste charity, that amounts to UK households throwing away seven million tons of edible food every year, including 4.4million apples, 20million slices of bread, and
3.1million glasses of milk.
It’s a particular kind of person who can look at a pile of veg peelings or old coffee dregs and imagine creating anything appetising. I consider myself virtuous if I manage to turn a few ropy red onions into a quick pickle, or blitz limp herbs into pesto.
But there are plenty of simple, innovative ways to cut down our wasteful habits. The Zero Waste Cookbook, by
Amelia Wasiliev and Giovanna Torrico, contains a whole host of novel ways to use every last scrap in your kitchen. Follow their mantras, and you’ll be cutting down on your food waste faster than you can say carrot tops…
Your freezer is your best friend
According to Wrap, most food can be frozen “other than cucumber, lettuce, and anything else with a high water content”. And you can freeze it right up to the use-by date.
Wasiliev and Torrico recommend buying a bunch of ice cube trays and using them to freeze odds and ends that, when stirred through dishes, become little flavour bombs. The last squeeze of a tomato purée tube, the final dribble from a bottle of red, a few minced-up herb stalks, or a couple of grated garlic cloves – pack them into ice cube trays and you’ll have flavour enhancers to hand whenever you need them.
Pretty much anything can be pickled
There are very few meals that can’t be enhanced by the addition of a pickle, in my view. The Zero Waste Cookbook suggests pickling as the perfect way to use up vegetable scraps that usually get thrown in the bin. Cucumber ends, aubergine skins and tough kale stems all become bright and tender when given a bath in hot vinegar with a little sugar and a few herbs or spices.
Stick to a 3:1 mix of vinegar-sugar, give tougher ingredients a simmer in the brine, and stuff softer ones straight into jars and pour over the hot vinegar.
One person’s pulp and peelings are another’s crisps and cakes
Griddle your lettuce cores, use broad bean pods in a parmigiana, bake potato peelings to a crisp, and turn the pulp from your juicer into a fluffy carrot cake. “There are countless ways to use leftover carrot juice pulp,” say Wasiliev and Torrico. “Dips, stews, broths, quiches, breads, muffins, crackers, or simply stirred back into your fresh juice for an extra shot of fibre. Leftover pulp will keep in an airtight jar or sealed bag for a day but try to use it as soon as possible.”
Even tough pumpkin skins – usually discarded – can be dehydrated in a low oven and then blitzed to make a powder. You can even add water to hydrate the powder “for an instant pumpkin purée to use in pies and other dishes”.
Turn your leftovers into household cleaners
Save your citrus peel to make a cheap, natural, household cleaner. Half-fill a Kilner jar with citrus peel, making sure it doesn’t have any flesh on it, suggest Wasiliev and Torrico, then top up the jar with white vinegar and leave to stand in a dark, cool place for about two weeks. Add more peel as you have leftovers, and strain into a liquid spray bottle after two weeks.
Coffee grounds, often used as a soil fertiliser, can also become an odour eliminator: “Simply fill a bowl or jar with coffee grounds and leave uncovered in the fridge for a few days. Use the same method for a shoe rack.”
Snap a ‘shelfie’ before you shop
Wrap suggests snapping a picture of your fridge shelves before you shop to remind you of what food you already have. Apps such as No Waste have receipt scanners, so you can keep track of what food you have at home, and receive expiration reminders and smart recipes to help you to use it up.
We throw away seven million tons of edible food every year