One of our Race Against Waste runners reflects on the lessons the month long food waste challenge has taught her.
I love food and often ignore what my stomach is telling my brain in order to carry on eating, but there has been so much food in my house during this challenge that if I behaved as usual I would have to roll the half marathon, not run it.
To get creative in the kitchen
Not being able to choose what food appeared in the bins each week meant we had to get creative in the kitchen by replacing ingredients with whatever we had in the fridge or devising dishes we’d never eaten before. All manner of breakfasts replaced my usual muesli and yoghurt, from ham and mustard croissants to banana pancakes with apple sauce.
That so much food waste is processed food
Which makes the fact that it’s considered ‘unfit for human consumption’ even harder to swallow. Processed food is pumped full of preservatives and wrapped in plastic to make it last a long time, so there really is no need for it to end up in a bin a few weeks after it’s made.
That there’s a whole lotta plastic waste too
Because a lot of the food was processed, it typically arrived in plastic packaging. At least when food is thrown away it decomposes – albeit slowly and while releasing methane when dumped in landfill – but plastic never decomposes. Most plastic in Southampton is incinerated by the Council, even though in theory all plastic is recyclable. I can’t bring myself to throw all this plastic away so now have a crate full of plastic sitting in my garden waiting for a recycling solution.
That I don’t miss cheese as much as I thought I would
I have toyed with the idea of veganism but the barrier I don’t think I could get over is abstaining from cheese. This month has shown me that it’s not that high a barrier after all. We received a small piece of stilton in week 2 which sat in the fridge like a treasured possession for over a week before we finally used a tiny amount. Normally at least one shelf of our fridge would be taken up with all manner of cheeses and we’d be going at them every day, but I haven’t missed cheese gorging at all.
“5 Things I’ve Learned From Our 1 Month Food Waste Challenge” One of our Race Against Waste runners reflects on the lessons the month long food waste challenge has taught her.