Going Green: Be smart with your food and cut the waste

Bread is one of the most common items to be binned but we can buy less, freeze excess and create croutons as just one example. With leftover food there’s lots of recipes they can still be used in and thankfully, plenty of amazing chefs are championing reducing food waste meaning they’re doing the hard work coming up with recipes so we don’t have to.

Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussein’s new show Cook Once, Eat Twice is on BBC iPlayer and centres around making the most out of the ingredients we already have at home and using every last morsel of them.

The 39-year-old mum of three says she even uses leftover oil to waterproof her fences and has a recipe for watermelon rind curry in her new book to accompany the series too. If that feels too extreme there’s a lot more ‘easy wins’ from tray bakes to family favourites like lasagna. 4.4 million fresh potatoes are thrown away by UK homes a day, which is 1.6 billion wasted potatoes a year. Nadiya has a quick and easy baked bean and mash idea that is perfect winter comfort food.

Around 9.5 million tonnes of food are thrown away in the UK annually, which is shocking especially given we have 8.4 million people living in food poverty and a climate crisis, so doing as much as we can to reduce waste is an obvious benefit for the environment and your budget.

One of the best ways to avoid wasted food is to be flexible about what food you eat. Broaden out what you buy and try eating the seasons. A third of food grown is wasted and much of this happens along the supply chains from growers to shelves to meet very high supermarket standards, so eating whatever’s available helps. If you only usually buy one specific variety of apple or potato try something different – it could be cheaper too. When fruit or veggies look slightly wonky or not the perfect colour they’re still okay to eat. Avoid multiple offers if you won’t realistically eat them and if food is slightly bruised, instead of binning the whole fruit, simply cut off the bad bits.

Batch cooking helps reduce food waste and crucially time spent preparing food in the kitchen too.

Eat leftovers in imaginative ways – if you’ve made a vegetable tray bake one night and there’s not much left, stir it through a risotto to create another tasty but quick meal.

Use things like chillis to flavour oils, use garlic peel to flavour salt and freeze whatever you make that you won’t consume straight away.

Most of us use our food waste bins, which is great so why not set yourself a challenge to put only peelings and cores in it for a week and see if – with Nadiya’s help – you can use everything else.

The presenter has an incredible recipe in the book for “back of the fridge pakoras” so there’s really no excuse not to use everything so time to be creative even with those carrots.

Celebrity spot

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has been speaking about her plans for the US electorate when it comes to climate change. With the countdown on to the elections on November 5 where millions of American voters go to the polls to elect a new leader, the 59 year old former lawyer said it was her belief that all Americans deserve ‘the freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.’

Green swap

Swap a full kettle for one with just the water you need. Boiling a cup of water for tea rather than a full kettle saves enough electricity to power an energy saving lightbulb for nine hours so only boil what you need and tea will be tastier too.

​Tone down your spending and get seasonal style

As the temperatures drop, the hottest trend on Tik Tok is #Fallaesthetic, meaning doing up your house with rich autumn colours like pumpkin orange and cinnamon brown.

With summer coming to a close, lots of us are thinking about our interiors now we’re all going to be spending more time inside. Redecorating can cost a lot and take a toll on the environment but there are surprisingly simple things you can do that’ll keep the cost down, avoid click and collect and help cut pollution at the same time. You don’t have to spend a fortune on wallpaper, brand new kitchens or entirely new floors for a space to feel significantly different after a bit of thought.

Start by having a seasonal clear out. Firstly you’ll likely find things you can sell and make some money from and secondly you’ll clear shelves and spaces that have had things on the surface so your home will feel cleaner and more streamlined. The one thing all show homes have in common is clear side boards and tables so keep things clutter free to feel more content.

Rearranging furniture can make a surprisingly big difference as can switching the rooms you have rugs and paintings in. Switch up things like cushions too and if there are things you fancy, ask friends if they have anything they want to swap with you – you’d be surprised at how many people leave something in their home but they don’t really want it. Check marketplace and social media pages for things being given away for free in your area too and if you need to get rid of something, list it there.

When it comes to giving stuff away though, make sure you don’t leave it on the pavement or you could be at fault for fly tipping.

A woman called Isabelle Peppin from Southborne, Dorset was fined £500 recently for leaving an Ikea cabinet outside her home for people to take for free. She argued she was just recycling it after sticking a note on it saying she was giving it away but council officials still fined her. Fly tipping at it’s most serious carries up to a £50,000 fine and 12 months in prison so keep your generous give aways within your garden or drive.

If you want to brighten up a room, there are plenty of outlet centres or community groups that recycle spare paints and wallpaper that will inspire you to create a feature wall. As the cold weather comes, adding blackout blinds behind curtains can add another layer of texture to dress windows. Extra blankets on sofas, not only add colour but allow you to feel cosy in the evening and avoid turning the heating on for a bit longer. For those who like being creative, colour scheming books bookshelves or melting used candles into new ones are small but visually rewarding activities.

Fact or fiction

£2 trillion.

The amount of global spending on subsidies which damage the environment and natural world.

Fact.

The figure is not only huge but it has risen, with more money going to oil and gas companies by $800 billion since the war in Ukraine.