BDR Waste Partnership

Food waste reduction charity WRAP aims to raise awareness of the need to reduce food waste and help us take action through its Love Food Hate Waste campaign.

The team behind the local campaign usually hold a series of events including cookery demonstrations and supermarket drop-ins across Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham.

But this year COVID-19 means live events cannot take place.  Instead hundreds of freebies are being lined up for people who take part in a big social media campaign to highlight the problem.

These include rice scoops, bag clips, re-usable shopping lists and recipe cards for 10 different meals making the most of leftovers.

The social media campaign will include tips for keeping your carrots fresher for longer, freezer advice for meat, and using fruit to make ice lollies. There will also be an online Question and Answer session to help people make the most of the food they buy and cook, save money and care for the planet into the bargain.

Some of the most commonly thrown away foods when still edible are:

• Potatoes (more than five million a year)
• Bread (24 million slices)
• Milk (almost six million glasses)
• Bananas (1.4 million)
• Salad (178 million bags)

The campaign is being run locally by the BDR (Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham) Waste Partnership and Renewi, the firm behind the award-winning waste treatment facility at Manvers.

Community Education Liaison Officer, Abi Cox, who is based at Manvers, said previous campaigns have reduced the amount of food waste thrown away in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham by as much as seven per cent.

“This is a great result and we want to thank everyone for doing their bit, but it still means that almost a third of our leftover household waste is made up of food, most of which need not have been thrown away,” she said.

“This avoidable food waste, which at some point could have been eaten, amounts to 27,500 tonnes a year across BDR – the equivalent of £60 per household.

“We know that most people don’t like to waste food and we hope this campaign will help us all re-think how we shop, plan our meals better, store our food better and use up leftovers.  Together we have and can continue to make a big difference.

“There will always be a small amount of inevitable food waste, and this should be composted or wrapped before being disposed of in household waste bins.”

Everyone can get involved using #LoveFoodHateWaste and follow the campaign on twitter @WasteLessSYorks and on Facebook @WLSYorks.