Marie serves up food waste solutions

This March, Lakeside Village is going green in a bid to reduce its impact on the environment.
Throughout the ‘Go Green Month’ the centre’s management team will also be sharing their experiences and thoughts about environmental care outside of the workplace.
 Here, Marie Beech – centre administrator at Lakeside Village, serves up some inspiration for cutting back on food waste at home.
 When it comes to food, I feel very passionately that it’s important to reduce what you buy if you’re not using it, as it just goes to waste.
As a busy mum, I try my best to make the most of the ingredients and products we buy at home, reusing whatever we can and limiting what we buy to try and minimise the amount that simply gets thrown away.
For example, if I have fresh produce that is approaching its use-by date, and it’s clear it’s not going to get eaten in time, I freeze it if possible or create a dish that uses everything up, such as a stir fry, a casserole or an omelette.
By doing this, the only things that really do get thrown away are items that have gone off before their use-by date.
Any leftovers from cooked meals make for a great lunch at work the next day or, again, can be frozen, and our pet dog is always a wiling participant, too, when it comes to making sure nothing goes to waste!
Online shopping is another way we try and reduce food wastage at home.
When you visit the supermarket, it’s all too easy to just throw things in your trolley because they’re on offer.
By shopping online and having it delivered that temptation is gone. It keeps me on track with my shopping list, only buying items I need and, in turn, saving me a few pennies, too.
The items I find most challenging to recycle are things like tea bags and leftover vegetable peelings.
We recycle all our coffee pods and we have recently set up our own vegetable garden and compost heap at home to try and eradicate this – but as always, time is a challenge!
It’s not always easy, but if we all do our bit to reuse food wherever possible and reduce the amount we buy in the first place, I believe we can make a real difference.
‘Go Green Month’ takes place at Lakeside Village throughout March, with a number of activities and initiatives set to happen across the centre.