Cutting down on food waste

Did you know that the UK wastes almost 10 million tonnes of food every year?

If we stopped throwing away good food then we could save the equivalent of at least 36 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. We know how important reducing food waste is so we wanted to share some top tips and tricks on how you can cut down food waste as a student and also make you aware of how we tackle this. 

What you can do

There's so many simple ways you can cut down on your food waste as a student that'll not only have a great impact on the environment but also help you get organised and save money too! 

1. Take an inventory - make a list of the food you already have before doing your food shopping to avoid overbuying. 

2. Meal plan - if you plan what meals you want to make for the week, you will only need to buy specific ingredients. Try using some of the same ingredients in most of the recipes so you won't be using completely different ingredients for each meal. 

3. Save leftovers - leftovers can make great lunches the next day, saving you time, waste and money. Or store them in the freezer to use at a later date. 

4. Be creative - remember you can always turn food that isn't fresh into something delicious. For example, vegetable scraps and peels can be made into stock, stale bread can be made into croutons, use over-ripe bananas for banana bread. You can also make soup out of almost anything. 

5. Buy 'ugly' foods - most supermarkets and farmers markets stock wonky veg these days. Just because they're oddly shaped doesn't mean they're not perfect!

What we do

Since 2014, zero of our waste has gone to landfill! 100% of our kitchen food waste goes to an aerobic digester and turned into renewable energy managed by Suez. 

By working with Ollecco, we have even recycled 2,464 litres of cooking oil into biodiesel. This is the same amount of carbon sequestered by 234 trees in a year. 

Have you ever chosen not to buy vegetables just because they weren't 'perfect'? Over 7% of fruit and veg in the UK never make it to the plate, which means that more than £1 billion worth of great produce ends up going to waste. This is why we've partnered with Waste Knot, an incredible company who rescues surplus veg from farmers' fields and puts them straight into chef's kitchens.

Every week our chefs receive boxes of seasonal produce which we incorporate into soup, the salad bar and other everyday meals at the canteens. Stop them for a chat next time you are in or head to our Instagram page for a weekly update. 😊

If you're interested in all the other ways we tackle food waste, check out our sustainability booklet. 

Making simple changes to reduce our food waste can go a long way

Contact: 
Follow us @ualcatering for more updates.