Stop Food Waste Day

33% of all food produced globally is lost or wasted every year, 25% of which could feed all 795 million undernourished people in the world.¹

The UN's Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 is to halve food waste by 2030.² To achieve this in the UK, further reductions in food waste of 1.8 Mt are needed.³ Here at Quorn Foods, we target to reduce our food waste by 50% by 2025. As a founding member of WRAP’s Food Waste Reduction Roadmap for Business Action on Reducing Food Waste, we believe it is our duty to help tackle food waste and strive to make our own reductions as a company.

Stopping food waste starts with changing habits. What we eat and how we shop can all help reduce our impact on food waste. Remember to plan ahead and don’t over buy - get creative in the kitchen to use up odd bits of food and leftovers. Here are our top recipes designed to help you reduce food waste while providing you with a super tasty meal.

Reducing food waste in the kitchen

1. Green Thumb When cooking with fresh ingredients, keep your potted herbs alive by dividing up into smaller pots and growing them on! Try this with homegrown parsley in our Quorn Breaded Fishless Pie recipe to reduce food waste whilst using your own grown, delicious fresh herbs.

2. Store, Sealed, Refrigerated Store any unused ingredients properly in sealed containers and refrigerate to prolong shelf life. Our Mediterranean Couscous Salad with Quorn Mince uses lots of varied fresh ingredients. Store any leftovers properly and use in other dishes.

3. Let it Grow Cut your lettuce leaves 1 inch from the bottom and regrow lettuce from the stem! Use when cooking our Crispy Quorn Vegan Hot & Spicy Burger Garden Salad. Spring onion, celery, bok choy and cabbage can all be regrown with a bit of home gardening.

4. Hey Pesto! Save your carrot tops to make into a delicious pesto which can be used in pasta, salads and sandwiches! Our Jamaican Brown Stew with Quorn Vegan Pieces uses fresh carrots. The otherwise thrown out carrot tops can be used to make something new which can be used in other meals throughout the week.

5. Cop a Peel Potato peels are a great source of fibre but if they aren't to your taste save these to make homemade potato skin crisps! Our Vegan Jalfrezi Curry is delicious with potatoes skin-on, if going peel-less save your skins to create a tasty snack.

6. Anything Froze Cooking for one? Store extra portions for later in a sealed container and freeze for up to 4 months. Our Vegan Nigerian Fish Stew makes 4 portions simply half the recipe or freeze additional servings to reduce your food waste.

7. Stock it to Me! Freeze and save your vegetable scraps for up to 6 months to make homemade vegetable stock from! Our Quorn Vegan Pieces in a Creamy Mediterranean Sauce recipe will leave you with lots of veggie scraps. The stock made from these can be used in our other low waste recipes like our Vegetarian Lentil Hotpot, here.

For more tips on reducing food waste, view the BDA’s Sustainable Eats with Quorn Foods recipes here, where you can check tips on how to reinvent recipe leftovers.

To find out more about Stop Food Waste Day and how you can help fight food waste visit www.stopfoodwasteday.com or view our Zero Waste recipe hub here for meal inspiration and to help you start to reduce food waste at home.

¹ https://www.stopfoodwasteday.com/en/about.html ² https://champions123.org/ ³ https://wrap.org.uk/taking-action/food-drink/actions/action-on-food-waste