Love Food Hate Waste aims to reduce the amount of food wasted.
On Thursday 24th July, the Love Food Hate Waste ‘Liquid Greens Machine’ will be coming to Victoria Square, from 8am until 2pm serving up healthy fruit and vegetable smoothies prepared from ingredients commonly wasted in the home. The city’s event, which is the first on the ‘Love Food Hate Waste 10 Cities’ tour, is in partnership with Central England Co-operative and Birmingham City Council helping us all to #DoOneThingDifferently
Supporting the event will be Birmingham City Councillor John Cotton; Cabinet Member for Health and Well Being, Maria Lee; President, Central England Co-Operative and David Colcombe; Chef Director at Opus and Café Opus at Ikon and Honorary Fellow of University College Birmingham. They will be in the square between 11am and 12 noon.
In June, WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign announced that Birmingham is one of ten cities across the whole of the UK to focus on fighting food waste in 2014-16 helping the people of Birmingham ‘do one thing differently’ – changing our kitchen habits and showing it’s possible for us all to make a difference and prevent our food from becoming waste.
Emma Marsh, Head of Love Food Hate Waste said: “We all have our own reasons for why food gets thrown away at home, so there isn’t a one size fits all solution. We want to be able to get people to look at the huge volume of food and drink that’s ending up in the bin and consider the one thing they might do differently to make sure that food gets tasted, not wasted. From storing fresh fruit in the fridge to using the freezer better, to downloading our free App to using the lovefoodhatewaste.com portion calculator – just doing one of these things can help everyone to waste less, save money, and help the environment.
“The Liquid Greens Machine is just one example of a creative way for people to experiment with the good food and drink they buy and try making something delicious and different as well as kicking off our exciting campaign in Birmingham.”
Further planned initiatives by Central England Co-operative include having a Love Food Hate Waste focused month in 2015 and 2016; teaching cooking and kitchen skills to vulnerable and disadvantaged communities within the Central England area and working with employees to promote Love Food Hate Waste messages so they can be Brand Ambassadors and share knowledge with colleagues.
Councillor John Cotton, Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing for Birmingham City Council, said: “The average Birmingham family could save up to £60 a month just by being more aware of what food they are buying and throwing away. We are often too quick to throw out fresh food rather than look at creative ways of using leftovers in meals – and this may be why people struggle to eat the recommended five portions of fruit and veg a day. Recent analysis revealed more than a third of all waste disposed of across the city’s households was food, yet 65 percent of people don’t believe they throw any food away.
“The council is a great supporter of WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign, and we are extremely proud to be involved in this latest initiative which aims to educate people about how to make the most out of their food.”
As part of this initiative, WRAP has enlisted expert help from several top chefs to show ways to use leftover food. David Colcombe, chef director at Opus at Cornwall Street and Café Opus at Ikon, who is supporting Love Food Hate Waste, said: “As a child in a Birmingham family, my mother was out at work a lot of the time. That’s how I first got in to cooking, by using what she had left in the fridge and ensuring nothing was thrown out. Now, in 2014, our lives have changed, but finances and sell by dates mean we still have to be innovative with our meals.”