Save your food from the bin

It’s good for the planet and your purse! Check out ‘Buy, Keep, Eat, Repeat’, to help you plan meals, store your food right, use up leftovers and recycle food in your food caddy or bin!

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Buy, Keep, Eat, Repeat

Over a ¼ of waste in the general rubbish bin at home is food. Keeping food out of the bin is not only better for the planet but it’s better for your pocket too.

How you can help. Use up your leftovers, freeze what you don’t use, and plan before you buy. Your wallet will be healthier too! Follow these ‘Buy, Keep, Eat, Repeat’ tips, to help you plan meals, store your food right, use up leftovers and recycle food in your food caddy or bin!

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Love Food Hate Waste

Save the planet, save your food. The average family of four can save just over £60 per month by reducing their food waste. From shop to home – we can all make a difference.

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Handy tips

Food storage A-Z

Check you’re storing food correctly. So it stays fresher and lasts for longer.

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Batch cooking

Batch cook to get the most out of your food and save time later, using fresh food first.

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Use up your leftovers

Take a look at the BBC Good Food website for lots of ways to use up your leftovers.

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Recycle or compost the food you can’t save

Use your food caddy or green bin at home for any food waste you may have. Find out more about what happens to your food and garden waste.

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Too Good To Go

Every day, delicious, fresh food goes to waste at cafes, restaurants, hotels, shops and manufacturers – just because it hasn’t sold in time. The Too Good To Go app lets you buy and collect this food – at a great price – so it gets eaten instead of wasted.

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OLIO

OLIO is a free sharing app that connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. OLIO can also be used for non-food household items too.

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Open Kitchen MCR

Open Kitchen MCR has created a range of tasty, simple, healthy recipe videos. The recipes use a slow cooker to ensure low energy costs as well as low ingredient costs, and all recipes can be adapted easily to incorporate any fresh, tinned or frozen vegetables, to help to reduce food waste at home.

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Help for businesses

Action on Food Waste

WRAP is inviting businesses to participate in whole chain food waste reduction plans (WCPs), working together across the supply chain to take joint actions that reduce farm to fork food waste.

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Guardians of Grub

Wasted food eating into your profits? Help your business, the environment and the community by using the Guardians of Grub Cost Saving Calculator and find out how much money you could save. let’s take a stand against wasted food.

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Good Food Greater Manchester

Good Food GM  brings organisations together to help our city-region strategically improve our food system. Together, we’re tackling issues including procurement, food poverty, waste and environmental impacts.

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Take action…

To make a big change, we must all take small actions. Becoming greener and making an impact is easier than you might think. We have put together a range of blogs, articles, toolkits and checklists to help you make a start.

Explore resources

Although we set out with a simple mission to reduce plastic waste, we’ve quickly realised that it’s just one piece in the sustainability puzzle. One of the biggest, but most easily attainable actions we can achieve is to look at where our goods come from and reduce the carbon footprint needed to get a product from manufacturer to consumer. Many of the products we stock are made by local, independent manufactures, who provide us with a wide range of things from reusable face wipes, wax food wraps, face coverings, soap bars, plant pots, kitchen cloths/sponges and butty bags.

Carl from Lentils and Lather

Our aim is to start changing the habits of families in Greater Manchester by getting them to ‘borrow’ rather than ‘buy’ brand new toys. We’re making sure that toys can be reused again and again by children who need and want them – and they are not just sitting in a cupboard or under someone’s bed.

Kim from That Toy Thing

The best part of upcycling is that old furniture is often better made than the equivalent flat-packed furniture we get today and with a little bit of time, love and care, you can create a completely unique piece of furniture for your home that no one else will have. I also love that these pieces of furniture have a history of their own and through transforming and updating them we can breathe a new lease of life into them.

Hannah from Tread Softly

The Green Recovery Challenge Fund is providing a further boost to the ambitions of the Great Manchester Wetlands Partnership to create a thriving, inspirational and connected landscape. It supports the recovery of wildlife through habitat creation and improvement as well as community recovery through providing opportunities for local people to develop skills, knowledge and beneficial connections to their local natural environment.

Jo Kennedy, Coordinator of the Great Manchester Wetlands Partnership

The reason I signed up to the Green Homes Grant scheme was two-fold, selfishly the measures will add value to the properties and make them more valuable in the future. But more importantly it benefits the tenants, keeping them warmer and prevents problems like damp and condensation. Ultimately measures like external wall insulations should keep tenants happier and ensure they remain in the house for longer.

Neil, Rochdale property owner

We used to think we didn’t have enough time to shop on our local market because we were working; how wrong we were?  We discovered it is an amazing place to shop for plastic free. We swapped tea bags for tea leaves and coffee jars for beans which we buy from The Market Grounds on Ashton Market – well worth a visit as the homemade cakes are delicious. All the stall holders have been amazing, not one of them minds us taking our containers to be filled with meat from the butchers. We get our bread, cheese, fruit and veg from the market too.

Julie from Ashton-under-Lyne

Kat Mulhall, Events Manager at Victoria Baths Trust in Manchester

Although becoming carbon neutral is important to our organisation, it’s a lot of work for a small team to put the measures into place. The Journey to Net Zero course has given me practical, step-by-step advice that has made it easy for me to lay the foundations for our organisation to be able to take action and achieve our goal of becoming carbon neutral.

Kat Mulhall, Events Manager at Victoria Baths Trust in Manchester

Kat Mulhall, Events Manager at Victoria Baths Trust in Manchester

The Business Growth Hub has given us focus and extra knowledge. They’ve helped us form the base to grow sustainably and work efficiently as a team while making us conscious of our environmental impact as a business.

 

Ollie Birchall, Founder of Nutri Bar

I’ve not really been a cyclist throughout my life, more of a runner to be honest. And certainly not commuted. But I just thought if I’m going to change, surely now is the moment to change. I’m feeling the personal benefits of doing it. You just feel better when you come into work. It clears your head. There are benefits of cutting congestion, cleaning up the air. Everyone benefits when people cycle.

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester

We think our water fountain is INCREDIBLE, it’s the perfect place for people to ‘refill’ and help themselves to any of the free edibles we’ve got growing in Market Place. We’re so grateful to all the organisations that helped make this happen. Alongside the plastic free motion that was passed by council and helped us achieve our first Surfers Against Sewage objective and in turn our Plastic Free Community status, it shows real commitment in reducing plastic waste and supporting our community.

 

Pete Fillery, Plastic Free Rammy and Incredible Edible Ramsbottom

I guess I’ve always been what you would call a conscious consumer. I’ve always detested plastic bags, all of my skin care products at home are plastic-free, vegan, and sustainable. My toothbrush is made of bamboo, there’s no plastic anywhere in the house. Everything in the salon has to be vegan – that was the first rule for me. We started with one brand of haircare products that was vegan, organic, and Fairtrade, but the distributor in the UK was wrapping all of the deliveries in plastic, and it felt really needless, so we ditched them.

 

Rachael, Gronn eco-salon in Bury

Although becoming carbon neutral is important to our organisation, it’s a lot of work for a small team to put the measures into place. The Journey to Net Zero course has given me practical, step-by-step advice that has made it easy for me to lay the foundations for our organisation to be able to take action and achieve our goal of becoming carbon neutral.

 

Kat Mulhall, Victoria Baths Trust, Manchester

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