The Environmental Protection Agency’s Stop Food Waste programme is encouraging everyone to make the most of their food, and avoid throwing out up to €700 worth of food every year.
To this end, the Stop Food Waste week will run from January 22 to 28, and will highlight the issues of food waste and provide practical waste reduction tips for everyone.
The theme of the campaign, ‘Food - make the most of it,’ will focus on the main foods commonly thrown away, and how to make the most of them. The EPA will be on hand to provide tips and advice on how to properly store and cook various kinds of food, and have developed a handy resource: ‘The A-Z of Food.’
Other events throughout the week will include community screenings of the documentary ‘Just Eat It – a food waste story’, to encourage discussions on wider issues relating to food waste for communities around the country.
Odile Le Bolloch from the EPA said: “Nobody wants to waste food, but often our busy lives and changing plans mean that food bought with good intentions does not get eaten. We simply buy too much, do not store it correctly, or we do not eat it on time.
“Making sure to correctly store and prepare our food means that when life gets in the way, our food can get another chance.”
Some of the most common types of food we waste include meat and fish, dairy products, bread, and fruit and veg. The ‘A-Z of Food’ on the Stop Food Waste website provides ingredient-specific tips to make the most of these common food items that often get thrown away.
People are invited to share their own tips on social media using the hashtag #stopfoodwaste.
See http//stopfoodwaste.ie for further information, including details of screenings.
