In Norfolk? Fancy going Gleaning?

Recently, Martin Bowman from Feeding5K (one of my fellow finalists in the Nesta Waste Reduction Challenge) got in touch to invite me to join their next Gleaning Day in Norfolk,  which is taking place at the beginning of April.  Sadly, I can't make it but I think the idea is so fab I wanted to extend the invitation out to anyone else who may be available locally.  Martin explains more in detail below:

Gleaning day coming up on Saturday 6th April

On Saturday 6th April, the Gleaning Network will be heading down to a farm in Norfolk to harvest tonnes of parsnips and save them from going to waste, redistributing them to food poverty charities. We need volunteers to help harvest the tasty produce! Contact martin@feeding5k.org to find out more, sign up to volunteer, or help coordinate. The day will be roughly 10am-4pm (TBC), and travel expenses are covered for those travelling from Cambridge and nearby- the farm is near Kings Lynn station. If you can't join us this time, sign up to our gleaning list and we'll let you know of all future gleaning days. Join the Arable Spring!

What is Gleaning?

Gleaning Network UK, recently featured on BBC Radio 4's Food Programme and Al Jazeera, and organised by Tristram Stuart and Feeding the 5,000, is an exciting new initiative to save the thousands of tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables that are wasted on UK farms every year. Farmers across the country often have no choice but to leave tonnes of their crops unharvested and get ploughed back in the soil. These crops often cannot reach the market either because they fail to meet the retail strict cosmetic standards or because of overproduction.

We coordinate teams of volunteers, local farmers and food redistribution charities in order to salvage this fresh, nutritious food and direct it to those that need it most, such as homeless hostels and charities. To date, we have salvaged several tonnes of excellent unmarketable British produce, including apples, cabbages, cauliflowers, spring greens and kale, and redistributed them to charities such as FareShare and the Best Before Project. Here's some more info, our video, and pictures of our last gleaning day. The movement is gathering pace, and we're rapidly expanding into a national network, with a hub now launching in Cambridge and Norfolk.

Here's more info in this video here:

Talking biogas & green heroes with Kevin McCloud at Grand Designs Live

Kevin McCloud at Grand Designs Live. (photo copyright GDL)

If there's one event that's fast becoming a highlight of my annual calendar, it's Grand Designs Live and the opportunity to a have a peek at Kevin's Green Heroes. a collection of ten designers who have been handpicked by Kevin McCloud for their commitment to both sustainability and innovative ideas.

And this year didn't disappoint. From sustainably produced wallpaper to tiles, reclaimed wood furniture to rainwater harvesting, there is something to appeal to everyone who is interested in great eco-design.

For instance I love this gorgeous wallpaper by MissPrint, an Essex based business, which uses PEFC certified materials and non-toxic inks.

And I think Hendzel and Hunt's chairs, made from reclaimed hardwood and Victorian floorboards, are just gorgeous. I'd love them for my dining room.

But when it comes to products that can have a wide impact on waste reduction, the design that stood out for me this year is the Compo food waste digester, developed by Nottingham Trent graduate Oliver Ling.

Its sleek design makes it an attractive product for any kitchen and that is crucial for opening up the marketplace to those interested in better managing their food waste.  Not everyone has a local authority food waste collection and many people are simply not interested in the idea of bokashi bins or wormeries.  However, I can see a whole host of apartment-dwellers and gadget-geeks taking a keen interest in this.

What sets the Compo apart from other systems is that as well as creating well-digested compost, its key by-product is actually biogas. Stored in small canisters, an easy collection system is central to its design, allowing its owners to earn money from the fuel generated from their domestic food waste.

Of course the message to households should always be to reduce what they can, but a solution like this helps to manage residual food waste and turn it into something useful that benefits the individual, instead of carting it off in trucks.

As I declared my particular interest in this to Kevin McCloud, he tempers my excitement with the news that the Compo is still only a prototype.

"Green Heroes usually features products that are already available for consumers to buy," he confirms. "However I thought this was such a good idea, I had to include it."

And I am glad he did because I can really see a lot of potential here.

Having caught up with the designer, Oliver Ling, it became clear that the driver behind the product was his own passion in helping to tackle the food waste problem. The prototype was created as his final year project at university, where he undertook a lot of primary research analysing the contents of domestic rubbish bins.  This is further demonstrated in that the Compo is designed to be manufactured from recycled plastic derived from food packaging.

"I wanted to design something that was sustainable," Oliver affirms.  "In fact, I believe it is so important, every product designer should get involved with sustainability".

Designer Oliver Ling, at the Green Heroes stand at Grand Designs Live

I couldn't agree more. Designers have immense power to revolutionise the future waste landscape, either through designing-out wasteful and hard-to-recycle materials from their products or in developing new processes and infrastructures that manage our wastes better.

I was interested in Kevin McCloud's view on this, especially as there is potential to develop more scaleable applications of the Compo.

And having watched his recent series of Man Made Home, which involved the construction of a cabin that enabled him to live off-grid, it was the localised production of biogas that particularly caught my attention.

Politely referring to it as "Episode 3", rather than "the one where you cooked on gas made from your own poo", the programme featured a visit to an Anaerobic Digestion plant, which incorporates the collection of dog poo and other materials to create a rich compost and biogas, capable of powering a small village.

Kevin wanted to apply this idea to his own cabin experience and in an entertaining fashion set about building an outdoor loo and biogas infrastructure to collect and process human wastes, supplemented by a good dollop of lion dung, which was retrieved from nearby Longleat.

"This isn't revolutionary," he insists. "And it's not unproven. In India, for 150 years, people have been building biogas digester systems across the country and lots of villages now have them."

Behind the obvious fun involved in building his own off-grid cabin, he was actually keen to explore what was possible, discover what could work in the UK and consider which solutions could be scaled up.

"I'd like it to go one step further and connect to the grid," he adds, "Especially as an average family can produce enough methane to cook all its food."

However, he doesn't envisage a future where households would have their own individual digesters and personally, despite my fascination for the subject, I feel a certain relief in that.

So what is the way forward?

Kevin tells me that the sensible way to do this is on a more ambitious scale, supporting several streets to divert waste from sewage systems into a local biodigester, which connects with the gas main to bring the energy source back into the home.

"Currently our infrastructure is national or regional," he says. "We could be considering all those services at a more local scale. Many sewage sites are starting to cover their tanks with methane collectors, but there is potential to create better self-sufficient communities."


"The infrastructures for collection already exist but we are very early in the process of transition and it will take philanthropists to influence and direct building self-sufficient communities."

"And where society once viewed those who once lived off-grid as green extremists, we are now considering them as true pioneers."


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Kevin McCloud is the ambassador for Grand Designs Live Birmingham and London.  For more information please visit www.granddesignslive.com

 

My pledge for National Zero Waste Week: decluttering my kitchen, the final frontier!

Yes, you heard it here first!

I'm going in!

Venturing deep into my kitchen, where for the first time in nine years I am going to attempt to clear out all the cupboards, banish the clutter, get organised and prepare myself for the new school term!

And that is my pledge for National Zero Waste Week, which kicks off on Monday.

The theme this year is to encourage participants to do that "one more thing" to reduce waste.

When I thought about what I could do, I knew that as we already recycle all we can, the only thing left to tackle was food waste. We still have some, not an enormous amount, but some food waste all the same.  And with the wormery still out of action, it's the main thing that gets sent to landfill, along sweet wrappers and crisp packets.

I thought if I pledged to use up what we have in the fridge during National Zero Waste Week, and try not to go shopping until we'd done that, it would be easy.

Then I thought again.

That's like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg.

The truth of the matter is I CAN'T STAND MY KITCHEN!
 
These days, I spend as little time in there as I can get away with and yet underneath I am a bloody good cook with a sense of adventure for creating good food.

But I need space to create.

I simply don't have it.

And it's all got on top of me.

Our kitchen is tiny and as the household has become busier and busier, the space has become more and more cluttered. My previously much-loved gadgets,such as the yoghurt maker in the photo above, have become unused and gather dust, supporting bowls that can't even be squeezed into cupboards for lack of room!

All too often, when I'm at my busiest, I take one glance at the kitchen, and sigh, before scooting the family off elsewhere.  Then follows the guilt of trying to rescue perishables in the fridge before they die a certain death. And it is here that I sometimes fail.

So I've decided that this vicious circle must stop!

I need to clear out the stuff that I will never use again, rehome it or recycle it and find some space in the cupboard so that I can clear the worktop.

I must also decide how much I really need those gadgets and cookbooks.  The breadmaker, juicer and yoghurt maker all sell the idea of such a lovely lifestyle, but if they clutter up the workspace and make me feel too disorganised to use them, is there any point in keeping them?

And as for the sound effects that add to the atmosphere, my washing machine and dishwasher have both started groaning like a poor elephant with a hernia.

It really doesn't create a relaxing environment, so I'm going to see if we can get them repaired.

Then maybe, if I make it safely back from my excursion into the unexplored corners of my freezer, I will finally have the quiet, uncluttered, well-organised kitchen I dream of...

... and the creative space I need to avoid food waste!

This National Zero Waste Week pledge may be my toughest challenge yet, but I'm rolling up my sleeves and going in and hopefully I will feel better for it. Admittedly, I may need some gin first to avoid the lemons going to waste!

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To keep up with National Zero Waste Week, follow @MyZeroWaste on Twitter.  Now in its fifth year, the awareness campaign is really gathering momentum with a whole host of industry leaders, politicians and celebrities making personal pledges, and even before the week starts, over 800 people have signed up on Facebook. So it would be great if you could join in and do that "one more thing" to help tackle the world's waste. Just one more thing!  And I doubt it will be as tough as my blimmin' kitchen.

Climate Week: 12-18 March and my Twitter interview #CWCuisine

 Climate Week on Twitter

Next week is Climate Week, Britain's biggest climate change campaign, which is raising awareness of the small changes we can make in working towards a more sustainable future.  I'm proud that Week 8, the finale week of The Rubbish Diet challenge will be running alongside it.

Reducing waste is a key step to living more sustainably, bringing benefits from energy saved through recycling as well as preventing embedded resources being wasted across the whole of the production and supply chain.  That especially applies to food and this will be something close to the hearts of those who are attempting the Zero Waste challenge for next week's Rubbish Diet finale.

It's great that one of the initiatives organised by this year's Climate Week campaign is Eat Low Carbon, encouraging consumers to reduce food waste, by shopping more carefully and using up leftovers, as well as other more sustainable options such as eating less meat & dairy and choosing local and season food.

I was invited by Climate Week to participate in a Twitter interview, ahead of their campaign, about my thoughts on food waste.  Here's a copy of the interview from this morning.  #CWCuisine is the hashtag used to help track discussions about Climate Week Cuisine.

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard How did the Rubbish Diet project begin? #CWCuisine

In 2008 I took the @stedsbc Zero Waste challenge.I was shocked how much food waste & other resources I’d junked #CWCuisine

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard I see... So what made u get interested in campaigning abt #FoodWaste? Why is it important to reduce our food waste? #CWCuisine

Firstly, reducing food waste lowers the impact of methane, a GHG released from food left rotting in landfill. #CWCuisine

Reducing food waste also reduces the embedded water & energy from farming, production, packaging & transport. #CWCuisine

For example, according to @WRAP_UK, 2,400 litres of water are needed to produce just one burger. #CWCuisine

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard Wow "2400 ltrs of water for 1 burger!" Those are some powerful stats! What easy tips do u have for reducing waste? #CWCuisine

Keep a food waste diary.Don’t buy things that regularly get thrown away & freeze unused food before use-by date #CWCuisine

Avoid plate waste by reducing portions. Let ppl help themselves & follow @toogood_towaste’s doggy bag campaign #CWCuisine

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard Those are some powerful & EASY tips. What do u think the government can do to encourage ppl to cut back on waste? #CWCuisine

Local government is doing a great job with the #lovefoodhatewaste campaign but more could be done via schools. #CWCuisine  

The @schoolfoodtrust is leading a Food Waste Heroes campaign & this should be adopted by every UK school. #CWCuisine 

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard So motivate & mobilise the public much as possible then. Does reducing your food waste have any economic benefits? #CWCuisine

Absolutely, the story about my accidental ornamental melons shows how I saved £300 alone. http://bit.ly/wd3WGe #CWCuisine 

And on average, households could save around £50 a month by reducing food waste #CWCuisine 

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard So we can all save a pretty penny then! What’s ur favourite #CWCuisine recipe from the #ClimateWeek website & why? #CWCuisine

Oooh it has to be the Turkish Roasted Veg from @itvthismorning’s Phil Vickery. Great for spicing up British veg #CWCuisine 

Climate_Week: @KarenCannard @Foodcycle has given our EatLowCarbon action some great recipes for using up leftovers.Do u know of any other such rec sites?

My favourite sites are @turquoiselemons’s monthly #foodwaste challenge, @myzerowaste and http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com #CWCuisine

I hope you enjoyed the interview and the challenge of me trying to squeeze my usual verbosity into 140 character answers.  It was fun.

 

More information about Climate Week can be found at www.climateweek.com. There are some great recipes in the Eat Low Carbon section, including a competition to register your own.  Live updates about the week can also be found by following @Climate_Week.

Tom Hunt and The Forgotten Feast

Tom Hunt, the creator of the Forgotten Feast.

Thankfully it's not just householders standing by their rubbish bins at home who focus hard on food waste, there are plenty of unsung heroes in the catering sector who are tackling the issue head-on too, combatting much wider problems than we have on the home-front.  Given the challenges of Week 3 of The Rubbish Diet, I thought it quite timely to introduce a fabulous idea, known as the Forgotten Feast that's about to hit London by storm.

The Forgotten Feast is a new restaurant concept organised by Tom Hunt, (chef at waste awareness events Feeding5k and FOE), created specifically to highlight the 20 million tonnes of annual food wastage that exists within our society. Whether it’s fresh fish thrown back into the sea, vegetables ignored for being too ugly, or unusual cuts of meat simply discarded, the Forgotten Feast is making a clear and public declaration against waste

Having started in Autumn 2011, in partnership with food charity FareShare, the restaurant idea focuses on rescuing large quantities of unwanted food, that would otherwise go to waste, and turning it into luxurious feasts. Using wild and seasonal foods, wasted foods, and foods ignored by the modern world, Tom creates a stunning new menu for each occasion based on the ingredients he is provided with.

I like the fact that this is no greenwashed endeavour. The careful planning and underlying dedication and philosophies will ensure that everything from the location, to the furniture to the food, to the zero waste recycling policy will be sustainable, ultimately highlighting the waste and excess in our society and encouraging those in the food chain to do something about it.

The Forgotten Feast is officially launching this weekend, with a Valentine's spectacular at FareShare's depot in Bermondsey, providing a banquet of food for diners to enjoy.  FareShare rescues surplus food year round and delivers it to local charities all over the country and every ticket sold will enable the charity to provide an additional 80 meals for the hungry and vulnerable people they support, thanks to grant-giving charity StreetSmart who are generously matching the number of meals raised though ticket sales.


Tickets are currently available for dinner Friday 10th February, Saturday 11th, Sunday 12th (late lunch) and include 3 courses, a drink and canapés.

More information can be found at the Toms Feast website or by contacting info@tomsfeast.com.  And if you happen to be unavailable for this weekend, but would like to attend others, follow @tomsfeast on Twitter for future updates.

My mission now is to entice Tom to Suffolk.  We're such a foodie county, and I'd love to have a Forgotten Feast here for us rural folk to enjoy.

The Rubbish Diet Challenge: Week 3, Waste Not Want Not

Welcome to Week 3 of The Rubbish Diet Challenge, where this week I am taking you into the kitchen to find out how much food gets thrown in your bin.

Managing food waste is one of the most important areas of waste reduction. Not only has it huge potential for slimming your bin, but by reducing what you throw away can save you money and provide environmental rewards too.

According to WRAP's LoveFoodHateWaste campaign if we all stop wasting food we could have eaten, the CO2 impact is the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road. That's a startling statistic and when I first heard it, it really made my jaw drop in surprise.

So in Week 3, I will be revealing what type of food waster I was, in the hope that even the least careful of folk will see that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And I've included tricks for using up leftovers as well as advice about portions and ways of dealing with waste if you just can't simply eat any more.

And if you're a stranger to the kitchen with the exception of visiting the microwave, I hope to inspire you to grab your apron, or lab coat and start experimenting with food. There's so much more to being a rubbish cook, than simply being rubbish in the kitchen. You never know, you may even be tempted to have a go at making pasta or bread as an alternative way to cut down on packaging.

So if you're ready to crack on with Week 3 of the Rubbish Diet Challenge, find out what you're in for at:

http://tinyurl.com/TheRubbishDietWeek3

Oh and I almost forgot, I did a spot of reminiscing today and if you didn't catch it at the time, here's one of the recordings I did for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour a couple of years ago.



STOP PRESS

iPhone users - there's an exciting new app available from www.wasteawarelovefood.org.uk, which will help you plan your meals from your phone with a recipe finder and portion planner. You can download it directly from the itunes store.

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Waste Watch makes recycling fun

Fun & Frolics at the Waste Educators Annual Conference
L-R: Beverlie Warman, Laura Silverstone, Steven Lawson & me
with Waste Watch's Maree Waller

Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in the Annual Waste Educators Conference, organised by the wonderful environmental charity Waste Watch.

It was a truly inspirational day, with workshops covering a wide range of accessible ideas to make the concept of waste reduction fun, especially for the younger audiences in the UK. There were also presentations from Kirstie Hawkes of Procter & Gamble about the ways in which the company is slimming down its packaging, and Lindsay Coyle from WRAP who talked about exciting plans for addressing food waste in schools.

The sessions kicked off with my presentation about the zero waste challenge that I took last year. To anyone who was there, I apologise now for going into extra time. Regular visitors to the blog already know I come with an appropriate warning "Talks hindlegs off proverbial donkey" and if it's on the subject of zero waste, it's most definitely a case of duck and take cover.

However, it was a real privilege to have the opportunity to chat to many of the recycling officers and waste educators who work up and down the length-and-breadth of the country to promote waste reduction within their communities. Ideas that particularly caught my eye were Green Awards winner Resource Cumbria's fantastic R Factor Campaign and Buckinghamshire County Council's Recycled Clothes show.

For me, the last workshop of the day, was most definitely the icing on the cake, offering lots of ideas to teach recycling to foundation-stage children, through the appeal of stories and song. Having a 5-year-old and also being an active governor of our local primary school, this appealed to me greatly and Maree Waller from Waste Watch was an excellent coach, opening up our imaginations to turn well-known songs into recycling messages.

Yes - she even had us huddled into groups, trying to make up our own songs that would appeal to the young. I can tell you with only about 15 minutes to play with, it was a bit of a challenge.

But our group (pictured above) featuring Beverlie Warman from Wokingham Borough Council, Enfield's Laura Silverstone and Steven Lawson, from Luton Borough Council, managed to come up with a festive little ditty, which I'll be singing to my children later.

Are you ready to join in? Come on, loosen your inhibitions, gather your colleagues or your families and get your singing voices at the ready to join in the fun. You'll already know the tune.

Jingle Bells
Rubbish smells
Don't throw it all away
Oh what fun you can have
wasting less each day!

Hey!

Jingle bells
Rubbish smells
Recycle all your tins,
Paper, cards and empty jars
get made into new things!

Hey!

Jingle bells
Rubbish smells
Compost all your greens,
food, leaves and Christmas trees.
It keeps the planet clean!

HEY!

And there you have it! As you can see, we were beginning to get into the flow and just in time for the festive season too.

Of course I can't resist asking whether you've got any similar ditties to share? If so, jot them down in the comments below and get me singing - but make sure you keep them clean because I blush very easily you know.

So, while you're scratching your heads, I'm off into Bury St Edmunds to see if I can catch up with the folk from St Edmundsbury Borough Council at their Love Food Hate Waste stand, which is in the market today. If I ask nicely, I might get the chance to have a go on their smoothie bike.

Thanks again to all those at the Waste Watch conference who gave me a warm welcome yesterday. As ever, I've come away even more inspired than I was before.

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For more information about Waste Watch and its work, please visit the organisation's website: www.wastewatch.org.uk.

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New war on waste in the UK

Only two weeks before the beginning of WRAP's Recycle Week campaign - where the theme is LET'S WASTE LESS - things are beginning to really hot up in the world of waste in a huge bid to divert millions of tonnes of rubbish from landfill by turning it into a valuable resource.

What's more, news of these significant developments is hitting the mainstream media with positive stories about new government strategies, examples of successful local solutions and enthusiastic responses from the public.

Take today for instance, with the Independent on Sunday featuring the Government's radical plans to cut the levels of rubbish in the UK. In the double-page feature "Kitchen bin war: tackling the food waste mountain" reporter Rachel Shields revealed that Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for the Environment, will this Tuesday announce some key developments in waste management.

One major step is to dispose of the "best before" labelling, which is blamed for causing confusion and making consumers over-cautious about using up food beyond the printed dates, therefore rendering perfectly good produce being sent to landfill. According to the report 53% of consumers would never eat fresh fruit and vegetables past the best before date, so its removal would be a step in the right direction, allowing them to focus on the more significant "use by" dates.

As well as changes to labelling, the Government is also expected to reveal plans to introduce new packaging sizes, increase glass collection from pubs, clubs and restaurants and expand "on-the-go" recycling provision for aluminium cans.

However amongst all this excitement, perhaps the biggest news is the Government's £10 million investment in five anaerobic digestion plants, which will compost food waste, creating both a source of electricity for homes and fertiliser for the agricultural sector.

The benefits of anaerobic digestion technologies were indeed featured on tonight's BBC Countryfile program, illustrating how food waste is managed in Ludlow, Shropshire. Presenter John Craven demonstrated how the foodbags from the council's separate collection are shredded and fed into a tank where it ferments to create methane gas. The gas is harvested using British designed technology and recycled as an energy source to power 300 homes, while nitrogen, the other by-product, is sold as fertiliser to farms.

In his report, Craven also interviewed Kim Nicholas, a local resident who supports the weekly food waste collection scheme. Responding to his question that it might be a hassle to manage a separate bin for food, she confirmed that it was no trouble at all. Furthermore, she happily related that the separate collection has made it possible for her to visualise how much food was being wasted. As a consequence she has taken steps to reduce it, a move that has saved around £30 per week in her family's grocery bills. If other consumers share this experience, this will be good news for the Government. Indeed, during the programme Philip Ward from WRAP confirmed that it is nine times better for the environment if we manage our food better and make more effective use of our leftovers.

Of course it's not just consumers who are responsible for food waste in landfill. Supermarkets have a significant role to play too, which is why it is very good news that Sainsbury's has purchased a share in the anaerobic digestion sector with plans to divert 56,000 tonnes of food waste from landfill per annum. This follows the recent announcement that Marks and Spencer has contracted waste management company Shanks to process surplus waste from its 600 stores.

As well as witnessing significant strides towards managing the targets dictated by the EU's Landfill Directive, it's great to see such positive news being heavily featured in the mainstream media, especially following the negative press that often gets stirred up.

Hopefully with feel-good stories such as those reported this weekend, this could be the start of further social and behavioural change thanks to greater public awareness and wider acceptance, complementing new opportunities presented by technological developments in the waste management sector.

It's certainly worked for me. Eighteen months ago my family created such a level of food waste that it is now unthinkable. But thanks to a greater awareness, these days we hardly have any at all and any waste that is created is eventually converted into compost using our very own Bokashi bin, a home-based solution which I discovered just over a year ago.

So I really think this week's announcements will be a great turning point for the UK. Now that I've calmed down from our recent swimming incident, I just need to bring my four year-old bin saboteur up-to-speed on the news and work on the remnants of his food waste even further. I hope that by the end of this year, we will even dispense with the Bokashi bin entirely if all goes to plan.

In the meantime, I have some major plans underway to support Recycle Week, which starts on 22nd June. More information about what I'm up to will be available soon. However, if you'd like to join in with the fun and games and make a pledge to waste less, pop over to www.recyclenow.com for details on how you can get involved.

I rather like the pledge that's featured on the site. Written by Andrew from Cambridge, it says "I should be made to wear something outrageous to do the gardening in if I do not squash and recycle all my cartons." That's him not me, of course.

But if my husband's looking in all I can say is with ideas like that Mr A had certainly better watch out. I'll most definitely be after him to join in with his own war on waste and I quite fancy the idea of getting him to wear something outrageous when he next weeds the garden. So watch this space. Who knows what will happen in what is still the Almost Average household.

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Curiouser and Curiouser: A right royal tale

"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" I muttered, as I struggled to get my bike out of the garage.

I felt like the white rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, hurrying and scurrying around whilst fiddling with my two-wheeled contraption that had been hidden away for most of the Winter.

But why the rush?

I was off to see the Queen. Or rather, off to see if I could see the Queen. Not Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts I should add, but Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on a rare visit to Bury St Edmunds. I've only ever seen her on TV, so I was curious to see her in the flesh.

I had only 10 minutes to cycle into town. I was most definitely running late.

But it was downhill all the way.... which meant descending a very steep slope, the kind that makes you want to shout "wheeeee" - all childlike, with my legs stretched out in a manner suited to balancing at high speed.

It was good to feel 10 again.

But I bet a 10 year old wouldn't have had a red face when they reached the bottom of the hill, like a big juicy raspberry on legs, huffing and puffing as the incline gave way to a a more level street, lined with people perfectly positioned for their first view of the royal party.

There was no traffic in front or behind. Just me, peddling past all the locals, the policemen and the men in dressed in black - the security professionals that had the whole town under scrutiny.

I wondered whether my reusable bags-for-life all scrunched up in my shopping basket would be met with an air of suspicion. I hoped not. I would have crumpled if I'd been stopped by a man in black and too scared of the consequences, despite my innocent nature. It was a curious experience indeed.

It was also a miracle that I made it into town just in time to see Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh passing through. The people clapped, cheered and waved flags. The crowd then followed the royal car towards the cathedral, while I made my way to the lounge of the historic Angel Hotel, where I often hide away with my laptop, regularly witnessing the appearance of the glass recycling bin being wheeled to the back door and bemusing the staff with my interest in such an activity.

So while Her Majesty distributed the Maundy Money and then wined and dined with the guests, I worked away like a busy little bee, tapping at the laptop to get as much done as I could possibly achieve before the arrival of the Easter bank holiday

But disturbed by a sudden noise, I looked over towards the lobby as the gentle humdrum of the lounge gave way to heavy footsteps marching up the stairs.

Blimmin' 'eck I couldn't believe my eyes - there were Beefeaters climbing the apples and pears. A whole army of them, or whatever the collective term may be for the traditional warders of The Tower of London. There were so many, I hoped the crown jewels were still in safe hands.

There they were, all the way up from London, looking fabulous in their costumes of red and gold. So distinguished and so British and so rare a sight in Suffolk.

Before the experience rendered itself into a figment of my overactive imagination. I rang my friend Ruby, who has a passion for historic events but who was unfortunately otherwise engaged and unable to make it into town that day.

"Guess what I've just seen," I chuckled and told her the tale of the Queen's Beefeaters."

She listened intently as I related my right royal story.

"Well guess what I've just seen," she said with a more serious tone.

"Waitrose's right royal parody of a veg box".

Now that's something special I thought. Waitrose selling veg boxes with a royal warrant by appointment.

But what she described was certainly no veg box, more of a recession-beating bargain of a veg bag, all prepacked with assorted vegetables for just a fiver. Now that was cheap, but with such a low price tag, surely it had to come at a cost! And it did because each group of vegetables were all carefully wrapped in their own plastic bags before being placed in the larger plastic bag, all for extending shelf life of course. How my jaw dropped. There's more plastic in there than one can shake a stick at, if you beg my royal pardon.

My day of flirting with glimpses of royalty might have been a curious adventure, but for me Ruby's tale of the assorted veg bags was the most curious event of them all, especially when retailers are busy trying to reduce the amount of packaging on their shelves, suddenly we were witnessing an example of a reversal in trend.

Where I'd glided down that hill in delight, I groaned all the way back up, not at the steepness of the incline, but at the thought of all those bags and whether other supermarkets are doing the same. I was certainly more red-faced by the time I'd reached the top. And as I arrived home, I felt more like a raspberry jelly balancing on a pair of wobbly legs.

I've since written to Waitrose, this evening in fact, after I'd managed to see the veg bags for myself in their plastic glory as Ruby had described.

I wonder if the royal household has bought any yet because of course Waitrose holds a Royal Warrant with Her Majesty The Queen.

Maybe I should ring and ask, but then again, maybe I'll mind my own business and stick to the local market, where I can get a whole lot more for a fiver, contained in just one reusable bag.

And maybe, just maybe, an alternative recession-busting solution can be found for Waitrose's assorted bag of plastic wrapped veg.

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Day 2: You should never waste a good egg!

Blimmin' 'eck. I hope I've not put you off your breakfast or made you splatter your coffee over your keyboard.

But look at me. Not my usual calm self, I admit.

But this is how I used to feel on bin day! When I would drag the wheelie bin, with its huge bags of rubbish and couldn't believe the weight of it all.

Would you believe half of it used to be food waste?

There'd be meat bones and chicken carcasses as well as kids' leftovers. Dig deeper and you'd find gone off food, often still in its packaging, as well as a bunch of banana skins stuffed in too - all because the kitchen compost bin was overloaded.

Like most households across the land I'd be scraping the plates and bunging in dregs of the day's menu into the kitchen bin and a few days later it would stink like a troll's armpits after a bath in a ditch of rotten slime.

I never valued leftovers, or the time I'd spent cooking, or even the cost of the ingredients.

But I did care about the smelly old bin and the stink it caused as well as the flies and maggots in summer.

Consequently when I started the Rubbish Diet, one of the first tasks was to eliminate food waste. I soon realised that this was a serious issue and by reducing what we could we would be reducing the methane that such biodegradable matter could create when buried in landfill. I knew we'd save money too, by buying less and using up more.

After all, according to the LoveFoodHateWaste campaign, the average household throws away one third of food that otherwise could have been used.

It's like a whole load of your shopping falling into a blimmin' black hole.

Hmm....so that'll be a bit like this then!



So we quickly held a family meeting to gather ideas and the kids had a lot to say. And I cooked more of their favourite things. It helped to reduce some waste, but we still had more than a few leftovers to manage because I was hopeless at organisation, terrible at planning and awfully lacking in the ability to deal with my three-year-old's fluctuating appetite.

Then I discovered was one thing that could really truly help.

A Bokashi!

Yes a Bokashi!

Now it might sound like a nasty old sneeze, but it's indeed a landfill saver for those who don't have a local authority food waste collection.



And it's magic. You just bung unusable food in a special bucket, sprinkle over some bran that is impregnated with Effective MicroOrganisms and a few weeks later after leaving it to ferment, you can add it to your compost, wormery or even dig it into your garden and it will break down into nutrient-rich organic matter. Much better than landfill and because the temperature of Bokashi is significantly lower than if buried along with the rubbish, there is no issue with methane.

But how disgusting does that sound in practice?

The idea of lobbing your slops in a bucket and letting it hang around for a few weeks, then a month later you end up putting the fermented matter in a corner of your garden. Eurgh!



It's hardly an attractive proposition is it? And it took me a long time to convince myself that this would be more favourable than a stinky old bin.

I worried about the smell of the Bokashi and quite rightly so. It could have been one step too far. But I was reassured that if I could cope with a pickly scent I'd be fine. A whole year on, the system is still fully operational and it's great. Indeed last year's contents have broken down into fabulous compost that we've now spread on the vegetable patch. And the liquid it creates as a by-product has been used as plant food as well as drain cleaner.

But the interesting thing is when we first started out, we'd easily fill it up in just a couple of weeks. That's how much food waste there was. But thanks to careful food preparation and reducing and then reusing leftovers, it now takes up to six weeks to reach capacity, which I would say is a real result.

However, a year on we still have a problem with some food waste - thanks to the lovely lad with the fluctuating appetite. It's not much but still enough that it continues to need managing.

So with potential rubbish on my hands, I have asked the question could I go back to throwing it in the rubbish bin?

After all, this is my Maximum Waste Week.

So this morning I sat and gave it some deep thought and I then seriously considered the consequences.

I then looked at the bowl of leftover Weetabix - or rather the slops of the Sainsbury's Wholewheat Biscuits, the ones that we bought only the other day.

Then I thought about adding them to my rubbish, actually holding the bowl in position, ready for the dregs to slip into my almost empty bin.

Now that made my stomach turn.

The thought of having food waste languishing in my kitchen bin for a whole week or even two, remaining untreated and gradually decaying all seemed a horrible proposition.

It now seems a step too far.

And just imagine the stench once you add scraps of meat, slops of baked beans and anything else that stinks the house out. Then there's the thought of the flies and the maggots as soon as the weather warms up.

Yuk! I don't think I could go back to that.

I never even got as far as thinking about the methane, in the unlikely event that my small amount of food waste would actually end up in landfill.

So folks, I guess another one bites the dust as far as this Maximum Waste Week is concerned.

Hooray....

Landfill is dead! Long live Bokashi!

Or so you might think.

You see, on the journey along the road of wasting less and enjoying more, we've made another discovery that will help us make even better use of what little food waste we have.

And they come in the form of three special girls, who came clucking our way just this weekend.

So without further ado, let me introduce you to Speckly, Snowflake, and Chickie, three gorgeous little hens who are settling into their urban crash-pad in our garden. Perhaps you can guess which is which. It really shouldn't take long to work it out.



I would never have guessed that the road to reducing food waste would result in such a fantastic experience. And the great thing is, the money we've saved in the process has paid for the hen house!

And our lovely chooky chooks have even got cracking on laying eggs. Just look what we found yesterday.



So on day 2 of my funny old Maximum Waste challenge, I must be the happiest failure alive. I'm most definitely a convert and apart from the old giblets, I don't think we'll be throwing out any food waste to landfill again.

What was that about giblets?

Blimmin' 'eck

What in the heck's name is that squawking?

What was that? You say you now know why the chicken actually crossed the road?

Oh dear, I don't think we'll ever be able to eat a roast chicken again.

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Do you ever stare at the broccoli?

Do you ever catch yourself staring at the broccoli, the avocado or even the melon?

You know the kind of thing... by the time you've bunged it in your trolley, carted it home and put it in the fridge you've gone off the idea altogether. If your taste buds don't play tricks on you, the social gremlins soon will, tempting you to change your plans at a drop of a hat.

And you end up staring at what was once your object of culinary desire and watch it slowly wilt and wither. You know you should eat it, but somehow you lose your appetite for something so limp and off-colour.

Well...if you live in a disorganised house like mine, with a bunch of faddy eaters, and where there are more comings and goings than the local hostelry, help is on hand...

....in the form of a little gadget called the Fresh Pod. Here it is...all lovely and green....as is the broccoli!


I bought that Broccoli (or Calabrese as it's known on the market - we're posh here you know) well over a week ago, hoping to have it for a Sunday lunch...but yes but no but didn't!

Now I don't normally go for gadgets, but as the Fresh Pod is sold by a local company based in Thetford and I'd heard such good things about them I thought I'd give it a try. After all, in the current economy and wanting to make every effort to reduce food waste in what is my haphazard life, who could blame me. When I rang up to find out about it it, Colin, one of the co-directors kindly offered to drop one off for me to try out. And I am so glad he did.

The pod sits in a refrigerator salad draw or in a fruit bowl and works by removing the ethylene gas given off fruit and vegetables as they ripen. By removing this gas from the environment the ageing and ripening process is slowed, keeping fruit and vegetables fresh for up to 4 times longer than normal. The Fresh Pod sachets also have the added benefit in that as well as controlling ethylene gas, research has proven it also kills bacteria, viruses, fungi and moulds found in fridges.

The sachets last six months after which time they need to be replaced. However, the contents of the sachets are recyclable and make a great fertilizer sprinkled on pot plants or in the garden when no longer of use in the fridge.

So for a gal who's not really into gadgets, that's me very much convinced. Okay, there is a small amount of packaging that can't be recycled, but I'm told they're working on that and it's neither here nor there when it comes to my veggies.

So thanks to Colin and Fresh Pod, the future looks firmly green instead of floppy yellow.

And yes, I still stare at the broccoli, but only in amazement.

And I promise I'll get round to eating it before the month is out! In fact, I'll have it for lunch THIS Sunday.



For more info about the Fresh Pod, visit www.freshpod.co.uk.

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The Bokashi and the Beasties: The first live gig

A round of applause ladies and gentlemen for the latest, most talked about duo (well in Stanton village anyway)....

It's the main act, so please give it up for ...........

The Bokashi and the Beasties!



Yesterday, I was the warm-up act at Stanton Primary School, where I revealed the contents of my gorgeous rubbish bin to almost 60 children.



I had my volunteer bin sorters ...two very brave children who were happy to delve into the bin. For reassurance I should add, all items were deliberately added that morning.

Bizarrely, both the children's names began with a "kicking K"... which made it very easy to remember, especially as my name begins with the same letter too. (Apologies, but having a six year old, it is so easy to fall into Jolly Phonics).

Then we had my other helpers, who pretended to be the bins for all the sorted contents...

We had a "Curly C" to look after the Recycling
Another "Kicking K" to take care of the Composting
A "S" to sort out my squidgy fruit and veg.
And a "W" to look after the rubbish.

The boys and girls knew about recycling and were enthusiastic to vote on what we should do with each item, while I told the story of The Rubbish Diet and how, during one week in March, all I threw out was one plaster.

There were looks of surprise when the bin sorters delved into the bin and pulled out some dodgy looking fruit and vegetables, but we decided the wrinkled apple wasn't mouldy and could be eaten once peeled. The banana could be used in a banana cake and the tomato or carrots could be used to make soup.

After all the sorting, the boy in charge of the "rubbish" was left with just a piece of film from the Weetabix box.

Result! If this had been a real bin, there would have been hardly anything to have thrown away.

As the bin sorters were hard at work, there were calls of "eurggh" as we revealed the morning's leftover breakfast, which was some Weetabix, still in bowl (but wrapped in a plastic bag for safety)...

And that was the intro to the final act!

The floodlights were lit to reveal the one thing that has helped me to reduce my rubbish....

Yes the Bokashi itself.


I warned that it smelled a little and drained off some of the bokashi juice to a chorus of "what a pong".

It was agreed that it smelled a bit like cider (confirmed by the teachers not the children, I hasten to add).

The children then queued up to take a peek inside the bin, before heading in my direction to have a look at the beasties who eat the bokashi and turn it all into compost.




Yes, the lovely wriggly squiggly worms, all looking dandy in their portable bed of compost.

And there I was, wondering how I would fill a whole hour. As it was, I had nothing to worry about as the hour flew by.

The kids were great, so attentive, friendly and inquisitive and didn't eat me for breakfast after all...which is a good job really, because the next tour-date is this afternoon, this time at my son's school!

So without further ado...let's give another round of applause for The Bokashi and the Beasties as well as the children at Stanton Primary School in Suffolk, especially my wonderful helpers. Also a big "thank you" to Mr Goddard for inviting me along.

Extra notes for teachers or parents that might be looking in: Please note the contents of the Bokashi should not be placed in the brown wheelie bins for collection from the council. It is intended for use in a home compost bin or wormery. Anyone considering a kit would need two bokashi bins, plus a permanent supply of special EMs impregnated bran. Once full, the bokashi bin should be left for two weeks and the liquid drained off every few days, while you use the second bin. More links can be found on yesterday's post, which discusses food waste.
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Why I no longer send food waste to landfill

Yesterday I was invited by the Jonathan Vernon-Smith consumer show to join in the food waste discussion on BBC Three Counties Radio. If you're in time, you can catch it again on the listen again feature (about 2 hrs & 52 minutes in) and hear us laughing about out-of-date chocolate and taking microwave meals off to your friends if you've been invited for dinner ... all in an attempt to reduce food waste of course.

On a more serious note, food waste is a real hot topic at the moment, following research last year by WRAP, which revealed that a third of all food we buy is thrown away.

That's like buying six bags of fresh food at the supermarket and throwing two in the bin when you leave, just because you couldn't be bothered to take it home or you changed your plans just after you got past the checkout.

If someone told you they did that, you would probably think they were bonkers. Yet in the UK we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of wasted food per year and this startling figure includes 5,500 chickens that are bunged in the bin, with full packaging intact, everyday... yes you did read that right...EVERYDAY.

When you add the fact that that we don't just spend money buying all this food, we also pay more to throw it away, the picture of lunacy becomes bigger. Then there's the environmental damage, caused by rotting apples and other organic matter in landfill, creating 18 million tonnes of of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

Phew...all from thowing the odd bit of meat or banana skins in the bin!

Food waste has become a personal issue of mine, not because I have always been perfect in minimising waste, but because it used to be the main cause of having an overloaded and smelly old bin!

However over the course of slimming my bin, I have discovered a few tricks of the trade in managing to reduce my contribution to the landfill problem, so I thought it was worth revisiting the ideas.

1. Buying little and often: I am absolutely rubbish at forwarding planning and would find myself throwing things in the bin because they were out of date or had gone off, so I now buy more fresh produce and meat in smaller quantities as and when I need them, allowing me to cook as the mood takes me. This also means I can make a quick visit to the market and benefit from the best deals.

2. Buying in bulk: I'm a lady who falls by the wayside of temptation, so I buy essential toiletries and other items in bulk, reducing the need to make regular visits to the larger supermarkets. My life of buying an extra dozen things I didn't really need is now over and no longer relies on my poor willpower. I can hardly believe my visits to the supermarket were once a leisure activity...these days I always make a quick getaway.

3. Reducing portions: I've become more careful with portion sizes, only cooking what I know we will eat. We can always top up with something else if we're hungry, even if it's a slice of bread. As far as takeaways are concerned, curries are our downfall, but now we just share one dish and eat it all, rather than buying one each and wasting the leftovers.

4. Using up fresh leftovers: If I know there are going to leftovers, I put them aside and try and reuse them for another meal. For example a bolognese dish can be quickly turned into a chilli-con-carne, just by adding a few simple spices.

5. Feed the birds: With two kids, the trickiest thing for us is sometimes bread crusts. The birds now lap these up together with some other odds and ends. It is a real treat to see our new visitors in the garden and the children love spotting the different types of feathered friends.

6. Feeding the worms: Of course even with best efforts, there is always going to be some food waste and we don't have the benefit of a separate food waste collection service from our local authority. However we already had a composter which is good for uncooked fruit and vegetables and it produces just enough compost to mulch our garden every year.

We can't use the composter for cooked food waste because of the risk of vermin and with this in mind we got a couple of bokashi bins, which can be tucked away in the corner of our small kitchen. It allows us to add our plate scrapings (including meat and fish scraps), over which we sprinkle a layer of specially impregnated bran. When full, we leave it to ferment for a couple of weeks before putting it in the composter and the worms love it! It's like hosting a worm party!

We also have a wormery, which helps us cope with the odd emergency when we run out of our bokashi bran. However, it can't handle meat or fish. The children treat the wormery as pets and we do have to be careful about keeping the temperature right in winter, making sure they are cosy in their blanket. The wormery seems a popular choice for a fly gathering at the moment, but I've picked up some excellent advice from Wiggly Wigglers, which I will share very soon.

The one thing I have learned is that food waste is very personal. Some people are great at managing it without any help of garden gadgetry, others (like me) are not so great unless they can step up to a lifestyle overhaul and get the right toolkit in place.

And yes, I still have the odd mishap, as I am human after all, but the best bit is, I no longer have to bung my food waste in the landfill bin, which means it no longer gets heavy or smelly and leaves me with one less thing to worry about!

If you want to read more about how I've dealt with my own family's food waste, try the following posts: How to be a rubbish cook; Look at my lovely worms and Putting an end to food in landfill.

For examples of how other consumers are also making the change have a peek Mrs Green's gorgeous site http://myzerowaste.com/how-to-reduce-food-waste/
where she's got some excellent tips. Specific details from other Bokashi users, including some other composting techniques, can be found at The Big Sofa, Faites Simple and Simon Sherlock's site.

More background detail about food waste in general can be found at WRAP's research site as well as their Love Food Hate Waste website.


In the meantime, I've got to get my skates on...because this morning I am off to explain all this to a group of primary school children.... yep... 60 of them... now that seems more scary than the first day I came face-to-face with a bagfull of worms, or indeed the WRAP event last week!

60 kids, eh?!

Yikes!

There's a big risk they could eat me for breakfast. So if you don't hear from me soon, send in a rescue party!


ADDENDUM: - If you would like to hear a great "all things considered" review of Bokashi bins, then tune in to Emma's podcast at the Alternative Kitchen Garden. Thanks Emma, aka Fluffius Muppetus for sharing the link.
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