Food Champions help to save money and halve their food waste

Living Magazine Food Champion and prize draw winner Carol Blunden

Before Christmas, over 150 Dacorum residents took part in the annual Love Food, Hate Waste challenge – its biggest year yet. By learning how to get food savvy in their kitchen’s over the course of a month, participants helped to save food, money and the environment.

Regular tips were emailed to the aspiring food saviours over the course of a month on how to get the most out of their food and all those taking part received a free qoody bag. The food champions said that they took part in the challenge because they wanted to help the environment, whilst others knew that they were already pretty good at saving food and wanted to see if they could do better.

The majority of participants found that the challenge made them more aware of the food they wasted, with over 90% taking on new behaviours to reduce their food waste. On average, the amount of food wasted by the participants halved by the end of the month-long challenge!

After the challenge, the new food champions said that the top tips they learned which helped them to save the most amount of food and money was using leftovers, freezing more food, checking what needs to be used up before cooking and planning meals in advance.

One lucky champion, Carol Blunden (pictured), who was also the winner of a new blender in the prize draw, said: ‘The Food Challenge really highlighted practical options available to us so we do not need to waste so much food. Food is precious – use and reuse it, freeze it or store it for later and plan weekly menus. Be in control for a healthy, less wasteful future.’

The next Love Food, Hate Waste Challenge will be running again in autumn, if you would like to be signed up for it – email recycle@dacorum.gov.uk.

In the meantime, you can learn more about reducing your food waste by visiting the Love Food Hate Waste website: www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.

For a wide range of other environmentally-friendly top tips to help you have a Green 2020, check out  www.dacorum.gov.uk/green2020.