Taking part in the Food Waste Challenge – Patricia’s journey

As part of BGCI’s mission to Address Global Challenges in 2021 some of BGCI’s staff took part on the Food Waste Challenge, a pilot project funded by WRAP. Here is Patricia’s Food diary and journey during the challenge.

Start of the journey

This week I have signed up for the BGCI Food Waste Challenge, which aims to reduce the fruit and vegetable waste we create at home. As a mum of 3 children and the person in the house that makes dinner for 5 every day, cooking is a big part of my day. And as someone that has worked in the plant conservation sector for many years, our impact on the environment is a big part of my decision on what we eat; as well as giving my children a balanced diet. So ideas on new recipes and tips on how to reduce our waste at home are always welcome and the reason we joined the Food waste 30-day challenge!

It is not just the cooking time, but also the planning, buying, looking in the fridge, what needs eating first and then trying to come up with something nutritious, tasty and that we all like – EVERY DAY!

The planning part of having food on the table is particularly tricky for us, as we live in rural England. It is a 40min round trip to get to a shop, so if you’ve forgotten to buy aubergines and you are making moussaka you need a new plan. This year it has become even more important to plan ahead because one of my children was in the vulnerable list for COVID-19 and we were shielding for a good part of a year. We have been very lucky to be able to receive supermarket deliveries every week – so it is one big shop a week for us.

This brings its own challenges as you cannot choose the size of the cauliflower or sometimes salad tomatoes are replaced by cherry tomatoes. Usually it is OK, the worst is when the fruit you receive is already past its best….that is the most frustrating part of food home delivery.

So here we are at the start of the challenge. It will be interesting to see how the food waste of a big family like us living in the middle of rural England compares to the food waste of some of my colleagues in centre London who can pop to a shop around the corner. Ready for the challenge!

Week 1

During the first week of the challenge I made a few changes to how I cooked potatoes. I made mash and potato wedges with the skins on, and they were a success with the children. So we will definitely continue to cook potatoes this way. Though skins will have to come off to make fluffy roast potatoes and Spanish tortilla.

The food I cook doesn’t change much from week to week, as we are a busy family with both of us working full time from home, so planning ahead is essential. My menu usually involves one of these: lasagna, roast chicken with veg, sausage casserole, lentil burgers, beef pie with mince (‘tarta’ is what we call it in Argentina), paella, meat balls, quick curries from leftovers, fajitas, risotto and home made pizza at weekends.

My food shop doesn’t change either unless I think we are going to have a special meal or invite people over (which we haven’t really in 2021 due to COVID). So week on week, my fridge has tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, celery, lettuces, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, red cabbage, courgettes, butternut squash and fruit for pudding. As I grow some vegetables in the garden, depending on the season we add to this list: chard, beans, peas, pumpkins, rocket, apples and soft summer fruits.

This week the only food we wasted were ends of courgettes, cucumbers, and an orange that went off on the bowl as I really don’t like cold fruit! What was the toughest was to figure out and keep track what kids had eaten and what they put in the bin without me noticing.

Week 2

As life is getting back to normal and kids are starting to have busy lives with after school activities, keeping track of cooking and food waste has become more difficult. Again the food shop delivered in one go, did not change from last week. Leftovers were used and we keep on using potatoes on their skins.

The main difference that I see in my food waste this week has been onions and potatoes that arrived home already rotten. This is extremely frustrating and unfortunately because of the way we shop for our food there is no much we can do about it, other than ask for supermarkets to improve at their end.

The other difference has been the way I marked on the website my food waste. In week 1 I marked onion, courgettes, carrots as partially eaten as I thought the ends are counted as waste, and the onion skins are counted as waste also. But talking to my colleagues I should have marked them as fully eaten. So in week 2 my stats look like I’ve generated no waste compared to week 1; but in reality my waste was the same.

Week 3

Unfortunately week 3 was so busy that I never had the time to add our shop to the website, as my husband unloaded the shop, and it was then really difficult to remember what was bought this week and what was bought the previous week. School activities and work took over and the challenge became less important.

I found that adding your food shop to the fridge on the website is quite difficult when you buy in kilos. For instance we always get 1.5 kilos of carrots, 2kg bags of potatoes, and 1.5 kilos of onions. So counting each item rather than adding weight takes a while when you buy food for 5 people.

I also learnt that my food waste appears a lot worse than my colleagues of a household of 2 since it is not divided by the number of people in the house! So I think that is very unfair. Maybe something to think of the future

Week 4

Our challenge unfortunately was never completed, on week 4 we were away in the UK for half term, and we mainly ate out and visited friends as the world opened up. So counting waste when going out is very difficult and trying to shop and plan during school holidays is very hard.

Conclusions

My food waste doesn’t change that much from week to week when we are on our routines. I would have liked to see more ideas on how to reduce waste of simple humble ingredients that I usually have in my fridge, and an easier way to load my food on the website and track the waste. Overall trying to do the challenge over 4 weeks was too long. School holidays are more difficult to plan in terms of food!