Waste Not Want Not even though it’s Christmas!

With the end of the year fast approaching, and the biggest excesses ahead of us over the next few days, before you tuck into your Christmas dinner, here’s a quick look at some startling festive figures, and some top tips to avoid waste this year.

Image credir: www.pixabay.com

Image credit: www.pixabay.com

Over Christmas, as a nation, we waste an extra 80%! Yes, you read that right, according to the Government-funded Waste and Reduction Action Programme (WRAP), we waste 80% more food at Christmas between us, roughly 230,000 tonnes of food which could be used to feed those less well off. Food for thought indeed!

So what does 230,000 tonnes of food look like? Imagine 74 million mince pies, or 2 million turkeys! And the cost of all this is a whopping £275 million...

Image credit: commercialwaste.trade

A study held at the University of Manchester revealed just how damaging our excesses are to the environment as well – our total household carbon footprint for every Christmas dinner in the country is the equivalent of driving a car all the way around our planet at least 6,000 times.

So there are some mighty figures to contend with concerning what we put on the table, but what about the rest of the festive excitement?

Britain wraps up so many presents that we use up enough wrapping paper to stretch around the planet 9 times, or go straight to the moon.

Image credit: commercialwaste.trade

But don’t feel bad for having fun with friends and family, as it’s a lot easier to make nifty little changes to minimise waste than you think...

Top tips to give the planet a good Christmas (as well as your pocket)

·        Buy presents with less packaging; reuse paper that was going to waste to wrap them in – even newspaper wrapping can look pretty cool when you tie it up in a ribbon – get creative and see what you can do!

·        Send Christmas cards made out of recycled paper, and always recycle those you receive instead of putting them in the bin.

· Compost all your vegetable peelings on the big day instead of throwing them away, as this can make a huge difference nationwide.

There are loads of great recipes online to find new ways to use up leftovers instead of binning them – BBC’s Good Food has plenty to check out as a starting point or check Love Food Hate Waste. 

·         Challenge your friends and family to go as waste free as possible, and then you encourage each other and measure the results. Making changes is always more fun when someone else is doing it with you

·         Freeze your leftovers when you’re full, or share them via a food-sharing app such as OLIO and let someone else happily eat the rest of your sprouts if you can’t face it for the third meal in a row.

So there we have it, another year almost over so let’s not waste all the lovely food we’ve grown in 2016! Here’s warmest wishes to you all for a very Merry Christmas and all the very best for 2017 from the team at EMERGE and FareShare Greater Manchester. Thanks for all your support throughout the year J

If you know anyone who might be spending Christmas alone and without a meal get in touch with FareShare today and we’ll see if we can point you in the right direction. If you are a business in Manchester City Centre with lots of excess to recycle, then get our Daily Takeaway service to clean up before everyone even comes back in the office, call us on 0161 223 8200. Closing 23^rd December and reopening 28-30^th Dec then back in from 3^rd January.