The kitchen is an area of the household where a large quantity of waste is regularly generated. Some simple changes in your buying and cooking habits can reduce the quantities of waste you produce.
- Do not cook or produce more food than you actually require. Sometimes our 'eyes are bigger than our bellies' and we end up wasting or throwing away the unwanted cooked food.
- Store leftover food in the fridge or freezer in a labelled tight-fitting container to enable you to make use of leftovers. Feed unwanted leftovers to birds or pets if appropriate.
- By eating as a family or in a group you reduce the generation of waste. When cooking individually, more waste is likely to be generated as more separate packets are used up. It is also probably more expensive to eat like this.
- Give smaller samples or tasters to children to see whether they like new food items before cooking complete meals for the first time.
- Make you own jams, conserves, yoghurts, pickles, ice cream, fizzy drinks (using a fizzer machine). This will avoid the need to carry on purchasing food in throwaway packages, but allows you to re-use existing bottles and jars.
- Similarly, if you entertain your friends, neighbours and family at home, why not make your own wines and beer rather than purchasing new packs from the shop? Again, you can use your own reusable containers which do not need to be thrown away.
- Try to avoid wrapping food in excessive quantities of aluminium foil or cling film when cooking or storing. Do alternatives exist? For example, cooking using a covered casserole dish rather than cooking food wrapped in aluminium foil. Store food in reusable/sealed airtight plastic containers.
- Instead of making fresh coffee using paper filters, why not use a cafetiere?