Our Claire has been looking at reducing her waste…

With empty shelves and rising food prices, I’ve begun to look at how to make more of less. The concept that’s grabbed my attention is zero waste: the challenge to send nothing to landfill. So, where my food is concerned, it means all the packaging and food scraps are reduced, recycled or reused so that nothing ends up in the trash.

The size of this challenge is daunting and won’t be achieved overnight but thankfully there are plenty of websites to help me out. For instance the Love Food Hate Waste website is very comprehensive, offering everything from hacks how to make the most of your food, an A to Z on food storage, how to save money on your food shop, and recipes to use up those leftovers.

I’ve also found some tasty looking recipes on the Women’s Health website but I’m not sure how often I’ll have things like asparagus and fresh mint leaves just lying around the kitchen unused! This is why I’m such a big fan of Jack Monroe. Although not explicitly zero waste, she offers budget friendly recipes made from the ingredients I’m most likely to have in my house. That way I can use up what I have without having to buy fancy ingredients that end up getting thrown away.

Another key thing to reducing your food waste is to, wherever possible, avoid the packaging your food arrives in. So, for instance, I refuse to buy any fruit or veg that’s in packaging. This means that most of it is from my local greengrocer rather than the supermarket. There are also shops that let you refill your ingredients. So, for instance, you might bring a big jar into the shop and refill it with pasta. This means you can keep topping up your kitchen essentials without having to buy the packaging as well. For more information on this, have a look at these features from the Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Noise.

So I hope you can see that, with a bit of determination, it is possible to move towards a zero waste lifestyle and not only will it save you money but help to save the planet as well.

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