Re3 workshops to help residents in Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell to reduce food waste

Did you know that people in Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell throw away about 22,836 tonnes of food waste each year? Love Food Hate Waste estimates that food waste costs the average family about £700 per year. What is more, by binning food that could have been eaten, people are paying for it twice, from their household budget, and from their council tax bill for its disposal. Food waste makes up almost a third of what goes into bins of the people living in Bracknell, Reading and Wokingham and costs the councils about £2.4m to process. A typical household in the re3 area throws away 2.7kg of food a week. 1.2kg (43%) of this is food that is binned before even being prepared and/or taken out of its packaging. Re3 has estimated that over £1m of savings could be made if that weekly 1.2kg of food waste per household were not binned. That is money that could be spent on other council services if we cut down on the food that goes in to our bins. To help households reduce the food that they waste, Re3 will be running a series of free training sessions in 2017 in the Bracknell Forest, Reading and Wokingham council areas on how we can all get more out of our food, save money on our grocery bills and help keep food waste out of landfill. The sessions will provide easy, practical tips and advice on how to freeze food, use leftovers, plan meals and control portion size. Attendees will be asked to share what they have learnt with their family and friends and within their own communities. That could be through something as simple as sharing food waste tips with other parents at the school gates or posting a leftover recipe on a Facebook page, through to giving talks at community events or hosting a leftover food cookery demonstration. The first workshop is in Bracknell in January. Details of others will follow. Keep an eye on the Re3 Facebook page. Read more about the initiative in the GetReading article, ‘Almost 23,000 tonnes of food is thrown away every year in Reading, Wokingham and Bracknell’, which also includes a video of school students talking about food waste at the recent Model Climate Change Conference in Reading.