Published: Mon, 06 January 2014
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“The average Irish household is losing around €700 a year by wasting food or buying food that is not used and having to throw it out,” Sean Kelly MEP said today, in urging people not to waste the Christmas leftover and to become more ‘waste food conscious’ in the New Year.
“Christmas is a time when many families come together for meals and there’s usually lots of cooking in households. But SafeFood’s 2013 estimates tell us that many Irish families could save €700 per year by being more careful when food shopping and planning meals.
The SafeFood’s Eat or Freeze it campaign encourages households to keep diaries of the food that they throw out on a weekly basis and to examine better ways to make the most of their weekly or daily grocery shopping.
Certain foods can be frozen, before going off, and defrosted and used later rather than just throwing it all out. It can be a real help to freeze a few cooked meals to defrost during the week in busy households.
“Another report released earlier this year in the UK estimated that as much as half of all food produced in the world or 2 billion tonnes ends up as waste every year,” Mr Kelly said.
“It highlights the needless waste of food that we are all guilty of from time to time. However, we will have an extra 3 billion people to feed by the end of the century on top of growing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy. It is time we all became more food waste conscious.”
Tips on reducing food wastage can be found here.
