99: Waste not, want not: top tips to tackle household food waste
After the unveiling of a new co-host (!!!), and some discussion about recent visits to Orkney and Ayrshire, we are joined on the pod by Laura Young (@LessWasteLaura) and Andrew Pankhurst from Zero Waste Scotland to examine how we can avoid creating unnecessary food waste in the home.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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Matt: Local Zero is brought to you by the University of Strathclyde, home of the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities. Hello and welcome to Local Zero. My usual partner in crime and co host, Fraser, is on holiday at the time of recording, but don't worry, I've got help in the form of a new Local Zero co host, and I'm delighted to be joined by
Matt: Dr. Jen Roberts. Jen works with me at the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable for Sustainable Communities and long time listeners will fondly remember Jen. She's appeared in our Christmas specials and a handful of other episodes. So it'll be great to have her along more regularly. Hello and welcome Jen.
Jen: Thank you. And hello. It's great to be back. And I'm really excited to be along here regularly as a new co host. So today we're going to be talking waste, and more specifically, examining what households can do to reduce waste in the home.
Matt: Not just any waste, but food waste, something we are unfortunately all too common with.
Matt: Joining us today are Laura Young, more commonly known as Less Waste Laura, a climate activist, an environmental scientist, and ethical advisor. And Laura was Scottish Influencer of the Year in 2024. She has tens of thousands of followers online and provides tips and advice on how to reduce waste in the home.
Jen: Also joining us is Andrew Pankhurst, Communications Lead at Zero Waste Scotland, an organisation which exists to lead Scotland to use products and resources responsibly.
Matt: Yeah, so thrilled to have Zero Waste Scotland back again. We had Samantha Moyer last time, uh, so really interested to hear what they have to say on this particular issue.
Matt: Jen, welcome. We've finally got the big transfer deal we were all hoping for. It's great to have you here. Obviously we've been working together for a little while now as part of the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities, but I just wondered if you could give listeners a little bit of background about who you are, the research that you're involved with, also just your broader interest so everybody can get to know you and what you're, uh, what you're wanting to tackle.
Jen: Yeah, thanks, Matt. It's fantastic to be back. Previously, I've spoken about democratic innovations. I've talked a bit about climate assemblies. I've talked a bit about heat pumps, um, and also a bit about politics. So that gives a bit of a flavor of the diversity of my interests.
Matt: And the diversity of your brain and extensive knowledge that you hold, hence why you're here, right?
Jen: Yeah, thank you. Um, so yeah, I am Dr. Jen Roberts. I'm a senior lecturer in civil and environmental engineering and co director of the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities. I really struggle with summarizing myself.
Matt: Oh, well, so do I. And I don't think, I don't think you need to. But I think what, the fact that you're involved with the Strathclyde and why you're now hoping to become a very long term and permanent host of the pod is because you have a particular interest in the local and the community and action from the bottom up, surely?
Matt: Or, or is there, is there a bigger picture at play here?
Jen: No, I think when I started my journey and looking at climate action from an industrial emissions perspective, so very top down approach to decarbonization and over the last sort of 10, 15 years, I've transitioned into looking at also the hyperlocal.
Jen: And I think my interests range from the really seeing what mechanisms, the sort of suite of systems of mechanisms are needed to really support sustainable and whole systems change. And you really need to approach change and systems change from a really multidisciplinary or multiple perspectives to really support transition, because if you take a technology only perspective to the sorts of changes we need to make from the household through up to the political, then you're just not going to achieve the transition that you need to at the time frame that's
Matt: So, in, in layman's terms, we can't do net zero, we can't do sustainable development thinking in silos, doing little bits here and there, you've got to connect the dots.
Jen: 100%. Yeah, that's connecting the dots across different sectors and parts of society and also across different ways of studying these, these sorts of issues.
Matt: Now you've, you've have a fascinating CV, you've been involved, I know, with CCS and subsurface. technologies, you've done a lot on water and energy. Um, and I'm always fascinated when you go away and you come back and you tell me a little bit about where you've been and what you've seen.
Matt: And one of your more recent journeys was to Orkney, somewhere that I am absolutely desperate to visit, um, on the list. Um, and you had a few kind of interesting reflections coming multidisciplinary systems thinking, but Orkney is often framed as a, as a place where. And we've had actually, we've done episodes specifically on Orkney about the retrofitting of their homes there, and they've also homes at the European Marine Energy Centre.
Matt: There's a lot going on there from that kind of ecosystem perspective, net zero and sustainability. What reflections did you come away with that you hadn't already maybe had before you arrive?
Jen: Yeah, I feel like I should explain to listeners. I was on holiday, I was cycling about for two weeks and getting, I mean I was lucky enough to get blown off into the ocean.
Jen: I think with this series of weather that we had, also phenomenal, I just want to, you know, allay concerned listeners. I also had some fantastic bouts of sunshine just in case you're concerned that I spent my holiday being blown about.
Matt: I have, I have, I have heard visitors and locals alike saying, you don't need an umbrella here.
Matt: You need a riot shield. Well,
Jen: I think also that my complaint around my skin, like the suffering in, in the wind conditions that people have said pay, pay a lot of money for that in, uh, in, uh, in central London for exfoliation services, like the wind can provide in Orkney. Um, but yeah, that was on holiday and actually never, you know, I spend a lot of my holidays cycling about on various islands across Scotland or mountains and so on, but never has work.
Jen: Really sort of got, I never have. I got so much inspiration for my work from holidaying around Orkney, which sounds actually probably quite concerning. It sounds like I was thinking about work when I was cycling about, that's not the case. It's just you being immersed in that environment and speaking to, um, the various different peoples across the different islands I was peddling through or getting blown about off.
Jen: Um, I just saw that, could continuously had these little insights and reflections on whether it was about water availability and water scarcity and water use, water governance, whether it was about energy and energy generation. I accidentally cycled up to one of the hydrogen test centers. It's completely by accident.
Jen: Um, and you know, you're surrounded by, um, very, very local energy generation. Um, also. Just incredible landscapes in which energy and the way of life and sustainability is just so very visceral. Um, I also was very lucky enough to spend time in some of the islands where food is, is, um, produced very locally.
Jen: So I was able to get fresh produce from just, you know, a stone's throw away way, even when I was in really quite remote, rural island community. So that was really inspiring.
Matt: Orkney's, as I say, on my list, but professionally and personally. So, um, great to see all of this action happening on the doorstep.
Matt: I went somewhere maybe a little bit less far flung, although that depends on where you live and where you holiday. I was fortunate enough to head down to, uh, Cumnock in East Ayrshire, uh, really important part of the world, particularly during the 20th century for coal mining, and then part of the world that really suffered at the hands of the decline of that industry.
Matt: And some of the things that I saw there really stimulated big questions. The biggest for me was coming away and seeing entire neighborhoods of prefabricated housing post second world war. And questions about how we retrofit this, the cost to retrofit these homes was more than some of the homes were worth and some of the strings of housing were maybe 90 percent council housing, but then in the middle you had one or two which were privately owned from the help to buy scheme.
Matt: So really big questions about how we do that. But your same feeling about how energy was never far away was the same here. We could literally see the old A frame of the local pit, which was there as a memorial. And these questions of the cultural heritage and the history of energy were never far away and explained why much of the housing was there.
Matt: So two different journeys, different parts of Scotland. Great to compare notes. So putting our travels to one side, Jen, today is all about food waste. This is something, sadly, all of us are all too familiar with, something that we can all get a handle on, and something if we do start to tackle, we really can start to make some real positive change in that drive towards sustainable development.
Matt: So, before we bring the guests in, It's important to maybe add a little bit of context and I like doing that with a few numbers. So here's a few questions for you. What percentage of food waste that we consume for the home do you think ends up in the bin?
Jen: Yeah, okay. So I have to now take my own practices whereby I get really upset if I have to sort of chuck away an incredibly wizened carrot.
Jen: Let's go for, I don't know, 10%?
Matt: It's a bit higher. It's between about 15 and 20 percent. So you've done pretty well there. Onto the second question. What share of all food waste in the UK is wasted in the home.
Jen: Ah, now, uh, I heard this on the radio recently, so I think 70%
Matt: That's good. That's good. I, I've got 60, but the discrepancy might be in how much of, uh, of, of is edible.
Matt: And I think when you bring in edible, it goes up to about 73%. So I, you, you're right. I think ballpark. So look, I'm going to give you the Holy Trinity on this. If you can get this one, you've, um, you've hit the jackpot. Okay. What share of, um, of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions do you think are associated with edible waste from the home?
Jen: Wow. Um, I really, really don't know. Um, Ooh, that's really a, uh, 1%.
Matt: 1%, right. Okay. Almost five percent. Okay, so set us up nicely to bring in the true experts on this to understand the scale of the problem, where it's headed and what we need to all do about it. So bring in the guests.
Laura (2): Hello, I'm Laura Young, an environmental scientist and campaigner, normally working on climate resilience, community engagement and all things to do with reducing waste. And you can find me at Less Waste Laura, where I exist online.
Andrew: Hi, my name is Andrew Pankhurst. I'm Communications Lead at Zero Waste Scotland, which is Scotland's national organisation for promoting a circular economy.
Andrew: In Scotland every year we generate Around about a million tons of food waste. So sometimes these numbers are so big, you can't really conceptualize them, but actually I feel like that one, you kind of can, like a million tons of anything is an awful lot, um, and about 600, 000 tons of that, so about two thirds of it.
Andrew: Comes from our homes. So I think a lot of time when it comes to food waste, people would be like, Oh yeah, but it'll be the supermarkets. Well, or it will be hospitality or industry or agriculture. That'll be where it all comes from. And it's about a third of it yeah but two thirds of it comes from us, from our kitchens at home.
Andrew: So that's quite an issue because. Food waste is actually one of the most carbon intensive things we can put in our bins. So we have a thing called the carbon metric at Zero Waste Scotland, which kind of for, for years and years, people used to try and assess like waste problems by like, well, how much of it is there?
Andrew: Well, there's a lot of paper. So that's something we need to do a lot of work around. Then there's a lot of plastic. Let's put a lot of emphasis on that. The carbon metric kind of turns that around and says, well, how bad is this stuff for the environment? And actually. Food waste, uh, is the most carbon intensive thing we can put in our bin after textiles.
Andrew: Textiles is, is marginally higher, um, although there is less of it going into our, um, day to day waste collections. But so, barring that, food waste is, is significantly higher carbon. And the reason for that is just the, Intensive process it takes to grow food in terms of, you know, you think about working the land, watering it, transporting it, packaging it, refrigerating it, cooking it, all of these different processes make it so carbon intensive that when we throw as much of it away as we do, That makes it a really big problem.
Matt: Is there also an element here, Andrew, about, and again, I'm not an environmental scientist, although we have one on the panel, um, it's about the greenhouse gas emissions that it produces. Okay. So is it, I imagine there's a lot of methane from food waste rather than say CO2. I mean, is, is, um, am I way off beam?
Matt: Is this a particularly pernicious type of waste?
Andrew: Well, this, this is the kind of point that sometimes Gets a little lost when it comes to food waste. So you are right that if you landfill food waste, so at the end of its life, if you put it into a landfill site, it will, it will decompose and create methane.
Andrew: Yes. Which is, which is an. an incredibly, um, intensive greenhouse gas, right? They say it's about 30 times worse than carbon dioxide, although it doesn't stay in the atmosphere for quite so long. But actually that kind of misses the point. The point I was trying to make is that the vast majority of the carbon emissions of food have already been emitted by the time it gets to the supermarket. But the point is, when you waste that food, then you've wasted all those carbon emissions. And if we think that we waste one third of all food that's produced in the world, then what we're doing is emitting an absolute ton of carbon emissions and growing and producing that food and then just not eating it.
Andrew: So that it's the pre- waste emissions that are the biggest problem. And so that's why it's on us to be like, okay, if we've bought this, we need to use it.
Matt: Laura, question for you then, are things getting better or worse? I mean, there's, there's certain kind of good news stories with regards to climate sustainability.
Matt: Others not so good. And you've obviously covered a number of, of these through your activism and, um, and other work. Is it getting better or worse?
Laura (2): Well, it's not getting better. I think we can probably start there. You know, we haven't seen leaps and bounds when it comes to our food waste getting any better.
Laura (2): And we've been sitting at that million tons forever, really. Um, you know, some of the best research in estimations of how much we waste came out 10 years ago in 2014, and it was a million tons then, and it's a million tons now. So actually the problem is not getting any better, but what I will say is we're definitely beginning to understand a bit more about the impact that food waste has.
Laura (2): And so at least we're beginning to try and get it in the right place. So if you have an apple core. That's food waste, you need to put it somewhere. Now people are getting into the habit of putting it into a food waste bin, so at least it'd be composted, so at least it can maybe get a sort of extra cycle of its life, go back into the ground, help us make more food, instead of it all being sent to landfill or incineration.
Laura (2): And I think there are some other schemes that are helping us with some of the other ends. So, Andrew mentioned that a third of all food globally is wasted. A third of everything that we make is, is wasted. And some of that is in the field. So it doesn't, it doesn't get picked. It just kind of is left to rot.
Laura (2): Some of that's in the supermarket where we don't pick it off the shelf. And it goes after it's used by date, best before date. And then of course, we've been chatting about the stuff in our homes. And we've been seeing some schemes that try and tackle that. The kind of classic one people will have heard of is wonky veg.
Laura (2): So supermarkets forever have thought that we are quite picky about our fruits and veg and how things look. And to an extent we are, but actually what that meant is that they would turn around to farmers in particular and say, we will only take potatoes, carrots, cabbages that are very uniform, that look nice.
Laura (2): And actually we've, begun to see a trend where fruit and veg is coming to us a little less perfect, a little more as the, as it was intended. And we've begun to see a little bit more in terms of us being less picky, the supermarkets having more variety and therefore we're seeing less wasted from that farm process.
Laura (2): But absolutely we are not, not getting any better when it comes to our households or indeed hospitality as well, which is a huge part of that.
Jen: I'd really like to hear a bit about why do we waste food? Because this is significant, a household really matters. So what is it that we are doing wrong?
Andrew: I think there's two things is there's a slight disconnect from food and where it comes from, you know, we buy food from a supermarket and it's just in little boxes and it's just like little products and we probably see each one individually and not the whole thing and then busy lives.
Andrew: Is probably the biggest, I think, like actual cause of food waste that we, I love the love food, hate waste campaign that we run. It has kind of five pillars. These are the five reasons food is wasted. It's, you know, planning, portioning, storage, using of leftovers. These are the behaviors that prevent food waste.
Andrew: If we all did these things and we don't, then we would waste less food. And if you want to break it down into evidenceable behaviors, it's those five things. But to me, laddering over that, It's just the fact that like modern life is super busy and like, it's just, it's just, if you're going to do all those five key behaviors properly, that takes time, energy and effort that you have to fit into a day when actually most people are cooking in a hurry, they may be cooking for fussy kids, they're trying to make different things, they're just trying to get it.
Andrew: Meal time over and done with. And actually it's kind of, there's a level of discipline really required to actually do all those things that prevent food waste, like planning meals. So that what you're buying for the week is only what you need. And where there's kind of leftovers from one. Thing you're making, you use them up in another recipe.
Andrew: Like that's kind of how you would do it if you were going to do it really to the letter and kind of come out of the week with no food waste. And I try and do that every week. And I find it a huge hassle, you know? So I think, I think this is the thing where you're up against modern living, which says everything's just in this big shop over here.
Andrew: You just go and get it all. And then, Oh my God, life's a Rammy. And you just try to get through the week. So to me, I think that's kind of what's driving it, which makes it quite challenging when you're an organization trying to try to cut through that, because not anything you can do about those two major factors, what you can do is just appeal to people to say, this really matters.
Andrew: And actually, if you want to take steps to change it, then it's those kind of five key behaviors of planning, portioning, storage, um, using the freezer, using leftovers, being savvy with date labels. They're all the things that you need to do. But it's a lot of information to get across to people, you know.
Jen: I think really what's coming out of that is quite a regimented discipline.
Jen: So you need to care and you need to have this level of planning. And I wonder to some extent how much you feel that actually also that ability to flex and maybe not meal plan, but, uh, kind of use things up as you go. Um, it's an element of being more flexible also within that quite regimented routine.
Andrew: We did a campaign the last kind of year and a bit, there's one of my favorite ones that we worked on and we did it initially when the cost of living started to bite and we're like, how can we say something that feels constructive about food waste reduction, but still was kind of mindful of cost of living because, you know, people are, people are hard up when it comes to food shopping.
Andrew: So we did this really nice campaign called the can pain, and it was all about planning a couple of meals per week that had their kind of core ingredients based out of tins, because as you know, tins are just last until the zombie apocalypse, you know, they're good for years. So like, if you don't eat that meal this week, because plans change, life's changed, life's busy or whatever.
Andrew: Well, you can eat it next year, uh, next week, sorry. Or you could eat it next year if you really wanted to. It's like the ingredients are not going to go off on you. So like there are, there are things like that that you can do where you can build in a couple of meals per week that are very sort of tin based.
Andrew: Um, and then if your plan's changing, you need to flex. It'll still be there waiting for you whenever you're ready for it. I do that a couple of, a couple of meals a week. We eat a lot of Mexican style stuff. So you can make things like, um, like tacos or tortillas or things like that. That are kind of based on like beans, kidney beans, black beans, kind of tomatoes.
Andrew: things out the spice cupboard. And actually you can whack that together, you know, fairly easily, but actually it's that one meal that if plans change and someone invites you around their house for dinner, you're like, all right, okay, that's the thing we'll not have then because that's going to be okay next week.
Laura (2): Yeah. And I think, I think the price is a huge part of this as well. And cost and also understanding geography, right? We, Not to the same extent as other countries, but we do have people living in what you would class as a bit of a food desert where you sort of walk in to a shop and you really do have limited selection of what you can buy.
Laura (2): And I really felt this because when I moved out of home, um, to do my PhD, I was living on my own and suddenly you realize some shops only stock huge bags of things and suddenly you're thinking my little freezer is getting jam packed because I've got to buy. This massive loaf of bread, I've got to only buy, you know, the big bottles of whatever it might be, you know, packets of peppers when I only need one.
Laura (2): And so sometimes you have to understand that people's physical geography can impact how much they buy. And so that's why we also need to be trying to make sure there's enough variety within shops so that people aren't left having to buy. But also cost comes into it because sometimes bulk buying can be cheaper.
Laura (2): And that's great. If you've then got a plan, as Andrew said, planning what you're going to make with it. But if you've not got a plan, it ends up not being cheaper because guess what? You waste it. But I think definitely the food landscape around you can have a huge impact. So the choices you have, the variety you have, and ultimately how much waste you then potentially end up with at the other side.
Matt: So are we landing on the bog off? paradox here, which is it's cheaper to buy at the till, but actually once, once it moves through the process of your home, you might be wasting more of it than if you'd have bought, you know, the one can, well, not the can, sorry, Andrew, they last till the zombie apocalypse, the, the one wonky carrot or pack of crisps.
Laura (2): Absolutely. And I think as well, it's buying, it's, it's overconsuming, right? And overconsumption leads to waste just at the heart of, um, you know, at the kind of ethos. So I think it is that is at the time you think this is a really, really good deal because actually it's going to work out cheaper than if I buy one, but it's only going to be cheaper if you actually use everything that you're buying and it doesn't end up getting wasted.
Laura (2): And that is normally where we slip into, into the bad habits.
Matt: So, Laura, you've had your head very much in the space of waste, and I guess you've had to deal with the kind of psychology and sociology of waste as well. Um, uh, from your perspective, um, do you think this is kind of easier or harder to fix than other forms of waste?
Matt: Uh, I think we've talked about the impact of it to some extent. I mean, I know I've got here some crazy figures about, you know, Food waste is worth about 17 billion pounds per year. We've talked about the emissions, but do you think we can fix this more easily or not?
Laura (2): Yeah, I think we can. And I really liked what Andrew was talking about with the different pillars, because it's not like there's one thing we need to do and that one thing's really hard and inaccessible.
Laura (2): Actually, there's a variety of different things. And so when I started to think about food waste in my own life, I started to think by. The really tiny little habit changes that I had to do that could actually make a really big impact. And so sometimes that's as simple as, you know, when I open my fridge, Can I see everything that's inside?
Laura (2): Yes or no. And if it's no, I'm probably going to forget about something and it's probably going to go to waste. In the same way that as Andrew said, if I'm buying some stuff for a recipe, just maybe then thinking, well, if any of that is left over, what else can I make? And maybe getting the right ingredients for that too.
Laura (2): And actually it's all these little swaps and changes that can actually make a huge difference. And also just understanding a bit more. Okay. Broadening our own horizon when it comes to cooking, you know, understanding that, you know, you can take a basic recipe like a lasagna and change it. It doesn't need to stay the same.
Laura (2): You can bung in the extra beans or veggies or whatever you've got left over. It's all right. And so actually it's just broadening out our own horizons to understand if I've got these little things that are going to go to waste, actually how can I shove them into recipes that I might make normally? So I think it's really easy and feasible.
Laura (2): And also We have a lot of time to practice, right? Because we eat all day, right? We have like three meals a day. That's three opportunities every day to try something different. Whereas say you're talking about a different form of waste. Maybe it's a car or construction waste or something huge. Actually, that is quite difficult because you don't.
Laura (2): Deal with that every single day. That's a once in a, you know, 10, 15 year, maybe more decision. And it's not easy to navigate it, but with food, every single day, you've got a chance to try something a little bit different and, and work out what, what works best for you and your family, your work life, your home life.
Laura (2): Um, and so I, I think it's a very manageable way to be thinking about reducing waste.
Andrew: Yeah, I'd agree. I mean, like some of the behaviors are more difficult than others, you know, I talked about food planning and planning food. I think that's the most difficult one. It's annoying because it's the most effective one.
Andrew: Cause if you plan your shopping really, really carefully, then you, you, you kind of almost eradicating most of the chances of food waste by not just coming home with a load of stuff. They haven't really got a plan to use, but, but it's the, it's the most difficult one. It requires the most mental effort, you know?
Andrew: So we've been focusing a bit more on social media because social media is kind of like quick, quick, you know, what, what message can we impart as people scroll by us. Some of those smaller, simpler behaviors, and some of the ones we're focused on is, is the storage ones, because that is basically, it's a bit more like recycling message.
Andrew: It's like, put it here. Don't put it over here. And actually some things like that still have the capacity to really surprise people. Like if you keep apples in the fridge, they'll last three times longer. And like, you know, apples last okay on the fruit bowl anyway, but like they still go off eventually.
Andrew: So if you keep in the, but nobody keeps apples in the fridge, right? Like people just don't do it. But if you do, they'll last three times longer. For years, The Food Standards Agency used to say don't put potatoes in the fridge because we're just, we don't really, it's not really sure if the, if it brings out that, you know, there's like a weird poison in potatoes that's like they're part of the poison ivy family.
Andrew: We think putting them in the fridge has this tiny chance of bringing that out, but then they, they don't. Spent lots of years looking at it, concluded that it, concluded that it doesn't and it's perfectly safe to put them in the fridge. And if you put potatoes in the fridge, they, they don't sprout. They don't grow all those horrible eyes and become like deformed little monsters.
Andrew: Like at least that doesn't happen for at least like six or seven weeks. Whereas in a, a cupboard, I mean, you can go back a week later and they've, They've become, you know, hideous. So like there's little things like that, put it here. Don't put it here that can really save, you know, like a significant amount of waste and things like potatoes is one of the most highly wasted items because they do just sort of you know, go wrong on you so fast, you know, you sort of turn your eye and there they are sprouting.
Andrew: So like, there's some little behaviors like that. They're really, really easy to implement. The other thing we always say is like, um, freezing stuff, like you don't really like putting stuff in the freezer and can't really understand why it's, I guess even made me feel like just goes in there and gets covered in like that whole frost.
Andrew: And then you don't know what it is. And I don't know, but like. Using freezers is such a brilliant thing. We always say a freezer is basically a pause button for your food and you can free stuff all the way up to it's. Use by date. So if you go, Oh man, these sausages are going off tomorrow and I'm not going to be here tomorrow.
Andrew: That's all right. Stick them in the freezer, just stick them on pause. And when they've defrosted, you just need to know you need to eat them that day. Cause they only had one day to go, you know, but you just pause it, you know. There's
Matt: something underlying a lot of this and I don't want to steal Jen's thunder here at all.
Matt: But I think there's something about having resources or capital for certain things. So. One is actually having the space for a freezer and, you know, to have the money to buy one. I think we've also talked about home economics and cooking. I like to cook, right? So does my wife. It's kind of a thing we like to do.
Matt: Rarely together, I might, we don't mix in the kitchen, but we like to do it. But, you know, that's something that we've maybe Learn from friends and family and, and again, that's about a skill, something home economics isn't taught at school in the way that it once was. Um, and then there's also something here about, and that kind of leads on to education, but something about support that households need.
Matt: So, I'm, I'm, I'm not going to put it back to you guys, we'll come, come back to this, but I just wanted to flag that I think there is something here about some households maybe being more constrained than others.
Jen: What's really fascinating and complex here as well is that you've got, People who might be in flat chairs where you have, you know, I remember the days of flat shed for 15 years, you know, I've got half a, half a shelf in the fridge and half a drawer in the freezer.
Jen: And that's what you're working with. And actually that means that you don't do the big food shops, which lead to food waste. So it is interesting. And I was, I was interested as well, how, you know, um, how successful some of your campaigns or how up to how, um, How some of your tips have been, you know, uptaken by people.
Jen: Um, and I'd like to hear about that, but I was also wondering if there's, you know, because cooking and sharing and eating is actually a very social activity. Laura, you mentioned we do this multiple times a day. We've got lots of chance to get, you know, to get good at it or to have practice at tweaking things.
Jen: Potentially also, um, an opportunity there to spread good practice quite fast, particularly if you're cooking with others, if you've been in a flat share or you're feeding, you know, I love nothing more than to get some friends over and feed them. I really enjoy eating together. I guess I was interested to know a little bit about how you know that your campaigns are working and how you know about behavior change and also some of these things that you know helps to drive behavior change faster.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, coming on that, I mean, evaluating the success of campaigns is something we spend loads of time and energy thinking about the truth of the matter is, is really, really difficult to prove that behavior change has actually taken place. Um, it would be inordinately expensive to do it because what you'd have to do, like the way people evaluate campaigns normally, they're not, they're not seeking to change people's behavior.
Andrew: You'd, you'd look at standard communication metrics, so, um, opportunities to see if EPR coverage, um, you know, sort of reach on social, you know, engagement, likes, comments, shares, all those things. And our campaigns performed really well on all those levels. But then you're like, that's great. So it was a successful campaign.
Andrew: People liked it. People responded to it. But did they do the thing we asked them to do? And I suppose people that are using marketing techniques to sell products have that proxy right there. They're like, well, did sales go up or did they not go up? You know, and they have that sort of really easy metric.
Andrew: They know how many products they're selling, so they know whether it's worked or not. Whereas we then have this task of going, Oh, no. We don't really know, like we'd have to go and look in everybody's bins and find that out. So it's been really amazing this year actually to be working on a project, um, with a local authority in Scotland.
Andrew: I can't really say who it is yet because I guess we haven't made the results of the pilot project public, but what we're doing is it's a full waste compositional analysis. So that is basically we're running a series of interventions, some of which are more infrastructural and some of which are really heavily communications based, campaign based, and then you actually go and collect all the bins, empty them all out, really meticulously weigh how much is in and has food waste gone up and has it gone down?
Andrew: Has food waste recycling gone up and gone down and do all the numbers. So really excited to be doing that because that's the first time you really have that. Opportunity to actually follow it all the way to the end user and, and, and actually say what has been thrown out and what hasn't, but it's very rare to get that opportunity.
Andrew: So I guess behavior change is a very long funnel, you know, first of all, you've got to raise awareness that there's an issue, then you've got to tell people what they can do about it. And then you've got to convince them to give it a go, and then you've got to convince them to keep doing that habitually forevermore.
Andrew: And that's a very, very, very long journey. And I think what we can see is that we're getting real results in awareness, and awareness of what you can and should do. And the, the reaction to our campaign suggests people are giving it a go as well. It's whether or not we're able to habitualise that, and make it kind of just, uh, Learned behavior like that.
Andrew: That's the challenge.
Matt: Yeah, so so Laura I mean you are no stranger to the anti waste campaign or reduce waste campaign what works and I'm really I'm also really interested in What doesn't work? What what puts people off?
Laura (2): Yeah, I mean and I totally echo what Andrew said about actually you need that long term change.
Laura (2): You could have a really interesting social media advert that goes out. But if it was just interesting and didn't actually impact any change, then it was just a nice thing for people to look at. Um, and so I think what works is chipping away all the time, keeping the message going, kind of short bursts of anything aren't really going to get that sustained change. But I think you can, you can get a lot from that anecdotal advice. So I was part of the BBC, the social group, which was kind of like young voices working with BBC Scotland to do online content creation. And I guess the aim was to make kind of funny content, but each person was to do it in their own spirit.
Laura (2): And I somehow got put into the quirky food waste recipe box and I thought oh well this will be good and so I was trying to show how you can reduce food waste but in a kind of interesting recipe style. And some of them you could tell people really loved and then people would get in touch and say, oh I made that recipe that was amazing.
Laura (2): Things like odds and ends pesto where you take all the odd bits of fruit and veg, well mostly veg that you would kind of chop off, but actually you just grind it together with garlic and whatever oil and a bit of cheese if you want and you make a great pesto. And loads of people wanted to do that.
Laura (2): Another one was a video about how you take a whole cauliflower and And make a whole meal out of all of it, leafs and all. And people loved that because they said, Oh, that's something I've always been frustrated by. Other ones were a bit more controversial. There was a watermelon rind curry, which I don't know if that went down that well.
Laura (2): However, the amount of people that get in touch saying, I saw that video, it got me at least thinking about, you know, what are we doing? But I think in terms of what works, it's long term. You need to have these messages kind of constantly moving forward. And I think what doesn't work is when it's just preachy.
Laura (2): Particularly when you just kind of wag your finger and go, do you know how much of an impact food waste has? Like, I cannot believe you're throwing away all these bits and bobs. And I think actually it's putting that positive spin on it. And so some of that may be environmental, but it's also saying things like, isn't it just great to either use your food waste bin and your bin doesn't get smelly or guess what?
Laura (2): You won't need to take your bin out as much. Isn't that great? Or also that money angle. Cause I think really, especially right now, the landscape is food is expensive. Food is very, very expensive. And so to be helping people see that financial benefit is, is really clear. But I think it's, there's that phrase about you attract more bees with honey than vinegar or wasps with whatever.
Laura (2): And I think that's true with these messages. It's like you need to be positive and bring people on the journey across a long period of time rather than just guilt tripping people into feeling like it's their fault that they've got all this food waste, um, and that they're stupid because they don't know how to avoid it.
Laura (2): Or, you know, it's all about the positivity and solutions focus that definitely works. So
Jen: on the solutions focus. I'm really interested. So yeah, I 100 percent obviously agree with you both that we need long term change and transition. Um, but you're right that just telling people they're doing stuff wrong doesn't work.
Jen: Actually, typically we need to, to, to drive solutions. We need to have infrastructure or systems in place to make things easier for people to do the good, the right things. So what have we seen at the household level that has made it easier? easier for households to be able to reduce food waste? Is it the introduction of the compost bins in certain areas?
Jen: Is it, you know, what, what are the mechanisms are that we did talk before about some of the mechanisms that say the bog off type is not helping, but what are the kind of mechanisms that are helping the household? to make it easier for them to reduce food waste?
Andrew: Well, I think the introduction of food waste collections definitely helps because it puts it into, you start to see how much food waste you're generating.
Andrew: And when you're having to empty that, you know, kitchen top food waste caddy on a, a regular basis, you start to become aware of what you're putting, how much you're throwing away, but then you can also see what it is as well and what the makeup of it is. So if you constantly find yourself putting slices of stale bread in there, you're like, maybe I ought to get a bread bin or something, or buy those half loaves, you know, or start putting half a loaf in the freezer when I can see it starting to get a bit, Past its best, you know, cause you can get great toast out of the freezer, slice by slice, you know, and slice at a time.
Andrew: So there's all these little things that I've, but I think that helps make it visible to people. Understanding date labels is a really crucial thing as well, because there's kind of three, uh, a sell by date means nothing to us at home. That is really a kind of stock rotational thing for the supermarkets.
Andrew: And we don't need to worry about a sell by date at all. We can just completely ignore that. A best before date is also discretionary to, to the consumer. It's kind of saying producer of that piece of food is guaranteeing it will be in the freshness that you ought to expect up until that point. And after that, it might not be, it might be, but it also might not be.
Andrew: The biscuits might start to go a bit less crunchy after that, or you might start to see, you know, a few things that are like past, past ideal freshness, but it doesn't mean it's not safe to eat after it's best before date. So the use by date. Is the third one, and that's the one that has a food safety connotation.
Andrew: And for definitely things like meat, fish, and dairy, then absolutely you need to stick by those used by dates. But for things like they do put used by dates on things like fruit and vegetables, and they're more safe to give the kind of sniff test or the kind of, does it look all right test? It's probably all right.
Andrew: You know, cause it's not going to make you ill. So there's a lot of confusion around date labels. So yeah, I think that that's a piece of, Like education and campaigning that we do try to keep keep out as much as possible because there's huge confusion around those and you find people that if they've ever had food poisoning, they're just so overcautious about these things.
Andrew: If they see a best before date or something, they're like, Oh, I better throw this out, you know, so understanding those different, you know, There's different types of date labels are really important.
Andrew: So one of the things I thought come all the way on the show might as well bang me on drum for two minutes is The love food hate waste campaign is is something that I think is is there to make that That step easier for people if you follow our social channels on instagram and facebook Then I guess what you're going to then get is every month you're going to receive Seasonal like time specific like what's going on right now specific hints and tips and advice You on how you can reduce food waste.
Andrew: And you'll get that in your, on your social feeds every week. It'll lead you back to content and meal planners and all these things that we have on the website that can tell you more than what you'll get in a bite sized social media post as well. So I guess that's something. And then the other thing that we've just recently launched is what we're calling our food waste bite sized course.
Andrew: And so for anybody that's kind of like, do you know what I really, I'm really want to get on top of my food waste. It's like a little training course. It only takes about 15 minutes to fill in, uh, to complete it, but it will kind of walk you through all of the, why does this matter? Why is it a huge problem?
Andrew: What can I do about it? Planning, portioning, date labels, using your freezer, using up leftovers, the whole shooting match within 15 minutes. So it's kind of really nice, not a huge ask on anyone's time, but it's just this really kind of simple and kind of concise way of really getting your head around the topic.
Laura (2): I also, I think, echo the fact that the Love Food Hate Waste is such a good resource. And I also think at certain times of year, it can be really helpful. So like Halloween, we're not going to go around and wag our finger and tell people they can't have a pumpkin because it's food waste. But we can tell them that actually everything they're skipping out can be used to make some sort of delicious festive meal and I'm sure it kind of adds to the fun of carving a pumpkin and making something alongside it.
Laura (2): The same way as I'm not going to tell anybody at Christmas to be portioning and plant, like Christmas is a time to maybe eat a bit more than, than you're normally used to. But we know that there's waste and it's good to know what you actually can do with that to be useful. So I find, especially at certain times of year, it is brilliant to find out, we know there's going to be a bit more food waste, but what can we make sure that we do?
Laura (2): Like what we were talking about at the beginning, let's not let it be a double waste where there's all these emissions gone into it and then we're going to waste it again. Actually, it's about taking the stuff and I love the seasonality of it to understand a bit more, you know, what to do with your leftover hot cross buns, your pumpkins at Halloween, your Christmas stuff, because that can make a huge difference as well.
Matt: How do we sell this to people? We don't want to lecture, but what, how do we get people to get on board on this? What are the social, environmental, economic value of this that people really feel and can get excited by?
Laura (2): Yeah, I mean, I think the economics is the huge bet, which is, I think we just need to remind people that, I mean, honestly, nowadays you do stand in the shops and you look at the prices of stuff and you think, that is expensive, that item that I want to buy is expensive, that oil, that apple, that potato, whatever it might be.
Laura (2): But between the shop and the house, that seems to disappear so that when we open our fridge, we aren't. Yeah. Still looking at that food thinking that costs 2. 34, that costs 1. 99, that you know, actually we're just looking at it going, that's my fridge that's full of food. And so I think sometimes it's helpful to think about it in a slightly different way to tell people that actually this is your hard earned money.
Laura (2): Like make sure you don't waste it, you know, get the most out of it. And yeah, You know, sometimes we can get lost in the big numbers a little bit, the million tons, the however many, you know, all that kind of stuff. But I read that the average amount of food that's wasted per household is about eight meals.
Laura (2): And that feels a bit more manageable to think, wow, eight whole meals of food is getting wasted in our house every single week. Um, so just getting people to kind of associate that a little bit.
Matt: Every week, every week, eight meals a week. I mean, I'm no mathematician, but that's more than the days in the week, right?
Matt: So that's, something's gone wrong.
Laura (2): But see, once you start paying attention to food waste, and I know that, and for some people, it's more than others. So I remember when I was babysitting for this family, And I was just astonished at how much the kids would waste in the sense that there would be half a plate of food and then they go, Oh, just chuck it in the bin.
Laura (2): And actually, you know, if that's happening every single day for multiple meals, you know, there can be lots of waste in the same way that, you know, we all probably pour a bit too much of things in and, you know, we don't know that portion control. And so even odds and ends off your plate can end up being quite a lot of waste.
Laura (2): But I think one of the important things we need to do is about the social aspects, just make it normal to, to be savvy with our cooking. And I think part of that comes to campaigns like, you know, Zero Waste Scotland, Love Food, Hate Waste, the stuff that I do on social media, but also seeing a bit more of that.
Laura (2): You know, on some of these Saturday morning cooking shows, you know, seeing actually, are we encouraging chefs to be, you know, pursuing sustainability through food waste? And I mean, I know a really cool thing that happened at COP26 when it was in Glasgow, was there was a few restaurants who decided to put Put an item on the menu that was a food waste saving thing.
Laura (2): And they would talk about this has, this meal has been mail made with a number of components that we would normally just throw away. And I thought that was quite a nice way of getting restaurants on board and for people to think a bit more about it. And so I think the kind of social aspect of, of just getting, getting into the habit is a big thing as well.
Jen: Fantastic. So, um, Let's hear it, like what are your top tips for tackling food waste at home?
Laura (2): First one is, I think I would have a couple of recipes in your head that are easily altered. So it doesn't really matter what fruit you have, what veg you have, they can be altered quite easily. So you get things like a good chilli.
Laura (2): Like you could basically chop any vegetable into a chili, any bean, any lentil and like, guess what? It's going to be delicious. All you need is the sort of base tomato sauce, some spices and like off you go. The same with those kind of like lasagnas, soups, smoothies, like just have some recipes in your head that you know actually can be adapted really easily because that can help mitigate some of that.
Laura (2): So that's tip number one. My second one is the one I gave away, which is see when you open, particularly your fridge, Can you see everything? Just can you see everything? The amount of times stuff just gets hidden and then you end up pulling out something that's gone completely blue and mouldy and it's well past it.
Laura (2): And I think the third one is, so in my fridge I've got a little half a shelf that I know It's for the stuff that's about to go, it's about to go off and I just sort of make sure that I keep it all in the same area so that when I open my fridge, I have a look in, I'm also drawn to that shelf that's got the stuff that I probably need to incorporate quite quickly.
Laura (2): And so that helps me with that adaptable cooking to try and put it in there. Um, and I think those are my, are my three that I seem to do every day, but I mean, I'm sure Andrew's got a million more and there are, which is the great thing.
Matt: What I'm taking away from that, Laura, is I need a fridge consultant, uh, I need one quickly.
Matt: Maybe
Laura (2): that's my next job. I'll come in, I'll sort of kemenage people's fridge and, uh. There's a show in that, that's quite a good one.
Matt: Fix my fridge.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Matt: Andrew, go on, hit us, what, what, what should I be doing?
Andrew: I'm, I, I've rummed an ad about including this one because it's the biggest ask, which is planning, planning your food shop really, really carefully.
Andrew: But I'm going to include it because it makes the biggest difference if you do do it. So for those people that like being organized, this is not such a bad thing, but it's kind of having a meal plan for the week and making sure what you buy from the supermarket is stuff that you're definitely going to use.
Andrew: And where there's half measures of something, half a tub of yogurt goes in this, Recipe or whatever, it's having a plan for the other half as well. So that's probably the most. Beneficial one of all. And the second one, I think I'm going to go with, um, portioning. Like one of the things that we have in our kind of kitchen drawer is a set of those cup measures and they're, they're really, really amazing for making sure you don't cook too much of things like rice and pasta and things like that.
Andrew: Like there's a good rule of thumb. If you've got one, that's like one cup, like half a cup. Of rice is enough for one person. So if you're cooking rice for two, it's one cup. And if you're cooking it just for yourself, it's half a cup. And if it's three people, it's one and a half and what have you. And it works out pretty much bang on every time and things like that.
Andrew: You know, it's so hard to do. We used to have a little game that we took along and it was a little bit of pasta in a jar. And we would ask people to guess. What portion is that? And they'd be like, that's, that's nothing. That's not even one person. And you're like, that is a portion of pasta for two people.
Andrew: And they're like, you're kidding me on? Because when it's dry, it looks so small and insignificant, but when it's cooked, all of a sudden you're like, oh no, we're not gonna eat all this. So portion is really important. We, we often cook too much, and it's the dried stuff like that. There's the real culprit, and we have little spaghetti measures as well, that it's, it's just like a little circle and then you measure, you grab a fist full of spaghetti and put the little thing against the end of it.
Andrew: And then it says, is that, that's enough for one person, two people or whatever. And,
Matt: and you, you, you've just got me in big trouble here. Cause this is exactly what, when my wife listens to this, she's going to be like, I told you so. I've been telling you for years. Why haven't you been doing this? Cause I'm the person you're talking about.
Matt: I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Jamie Oliver, handful of this and a scoop of that.
Jen: I can also vouch that when you have a teenager staying with you, then you, then those
Matt: portions, yeah, out of the window. Yeah. Two, two, two handfuls. Yeah.
Andrew: And then my, my third one, I've, I've kind of. alluded to it already, but it's usually freezer.
Andrew: It's a pause button for your food. If you think something's about to, to, to be passed where you can eat it and you know, you're not going to be around tomorrow or the next day or whatever, or you just don't think you're going to get around to it, stick it on pause and then defrost it and have it later.
Matt: Well, that is a wealth of tips and Jen, I think you and I can take that straight into the kitchen. Listen, I think we're gonna have to end there. I want to thank you both for all of your time and all of your wisdom. It'd be great to have you along. Andrew, really keen to hear about the bin study. Good luck.
Matt: And Laura, look forward to hearing more about your campaigns. But until then, thank you very much.
Andrew: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah.
Matt: What a wonderful chat there. I mean, I've picked up all sorts of tips and insights. Jen, what do you take away from that?
Jen: Yeah, so much. We also didn't talk about because we talked a lot about the kind of the importance of decision making within the home and kind of about the individuals. And there's, we didn't get a chance to really even scratch the surface about what communities are doing to reduce food waste.
Jen: And I've seen, you know, cycle past community fridges and their kind of food race cooperatives. And there are things that we could have talked about. And there's also quite a strong emphasis of supermarkets, um, rather than other forms of. And, and so I thought that was, we, we had an incredibly rich conversation, learnt a lot, but there was still, we just scratched the surface on the issue.
Matt: I totally agree. Um, I've encountered a few different kind of debates of late that point to one of the, the first defense mechanisms of big business and big industry is to. throw it back at the individual and to atomize it that you know the only way you can make a difference is individually. Now food waste because it's in the home does feel like quite an individual problem but again you know you share your home you pointed this out with the the flat share and we also as you say as part of a community can learn so much from each other and part of that infrastructure is Community fridges, what an excellent idea, or to exchange, you know, recipes and cooking ideas that are able to use this up and the skills associated with that.
Matt: I think communities have a tremendous role to play in this, but yes, I think We can't also overlook that a lot of it does also come down to some individual decision making with support from industry and government. It's, as you say at the beginning of the show, it's systems thinking.
Jen: Yeah, I think there's something really interesting here as well around, so the problem might be at the individual, the household level.
Jen: We didn't really get into how you really understand practices at the household level, which we know are very, very difficult to understand. Food waste is quite potentially very personal topic as well, to talk about how, how much. checking out. I know that in the area that I live in Glasgow, there's very, very few people that actually do the food waste compost.
Jen: So there's, we didn't really talk about the uptake of some of these interventions that have come from local authorities to try and help us to reduce waste. So I think there's something very interesting there around what's working, what's not working in different areas, and how we even get a handle on these numbers.
Matt: Or the absence of this support. So I mean, I, I could pay 40 for a brown bin to take all of my waste away, but I couldn't pay 40 pounds for a compost bin that might be subsidized or 20 pounds for a compost bin and put it in my garden or a communal compost. So, yeah, there is this sort of circular economy piece, but I feel like I've come away with a few tips and a few things that I'm certainly going to be uh, encouraged to do by my fellow householders, uh, as well after it.
Jen: I'm sure that our listeners will have done as well. There's a wealth of top tips. I think your next household meeting, Matt, might be let's have a fridge review.
Matt: Oh, they'll hate me because I've got two small fridges and the other small one. I have, I often forget about, and then I open it a few days later, I
Jen: feel like now I've got a response that I can give.
Jen: Cause I'm a bit of a fan of just opening the fridge and just looking at what's in there. Cause I like to do a stock take to know what's there. Um, and now I've got a response when people are ridiculing me for what am I doing? I'm just staring in the fridge and yeah, I am. Doing a stock take is important for reducing food waste
Matt: very much.
Matt: So we've got fridge consultant, fridge staring. There's a whole wide world of potential boredom fillers. So, right. Look, I think at that point we should encourage folk to go Zero Waste Scotland, uh, Less Waste Laura, check them out. they've got a wealth of valuable advice to provide, so do take a look at that.
Jen: Well, that's all we have time for this episode. Hopefully we can all take some tips away from this chat. And why don't you take 10 seconds to share this with your family and friends and see if we can all make little, Or big changes you can find and follow us on LinkedIn or email. Any thoughts to localzeropod@gmail.com.
Matt: Yep. Absolutely. And thank you. Thank you so much, Jen for co-hosting. It's an absolute pleasure to have had you on. Looking forward to recording more episodes with you soon, and our next episode is a very, very special one. Indeed. We are celebrating episode 100, so make sure you subscribe to the pod that lands in your library when it's hot.
Matt: For older episodes, further reading, and the whole back catalogue, head to localzeropod.com. But for now, thank you, and goodbye.