How to avoid food waste

Our top 3 tips on becoming more sustainable

Did you know...The UK wastes around 9.5 million tonnes of food every year, with top wasted items including bread, potatoes and milk?

Becoming more sustainable helps to reduce food wastage and also saves you money!

Here are a few ways you can start to avoid food waste:

1. Organisation

Before you do anything, you need to organise! This includes planning what you're going to cook/eat and only buying those ingredients (and a few snacks, of course).

Sounds easy, right? Well, it is! Food waste is often a result of buying too much food and not being able to eat everything before it expires.

2. Use the freezer!

Again, sounds easy, right? You'd be surprised by how many people forget to take advantage of their freezer! Got leftovers? Freeze them. Bought too much chicken? Freeze it. It's brilliant for saving food, especially when you're on a student budget.

Try using an ice cube tray to avoid wasting things like herbs and veggies. Chop up leftover herbs, portion them out into an ice cube tray and pour in olive oil to coat. Next time you are cooking a meal using those herbs, you can pop a cube straight into the frying pan. As for the veggies, you can add things like spinach to a curry or cucumbers in a glass of water.

3. Save your Bread

Bread is one of the highest food waste categories, but it's also one of the easiest foods to save from binning.

If you know you aren't going to eat the rest of the bread before it goes off, pop it in the freezer (pre-sliced), and you can defrost a slice whenever you like. You can even do this as soon as you've bought it, in case you forget about it in the cupboard.

If your bread has gone a bit stale, not mouldy, you can turn it into delicious croutons for salads and soups!

Check out more food hacks on our Student Living page.