Food & Fashion Waste

Firstly, I should explain what food and fashion waste is. Food waste is something we all do, unfortunately. I'm talking about all the leftovers we don't eat and all the food we forget about until we have to clean out the refrigerator. Fashion waste includes all those times you've thrown out old clothes, and you haven't put them in a clothing bin, or helped recycle the materials. I was asked to come up with some suggestions on how to decrease our food and fashion wastage. 

Food Waste

Now I'm not going to tell you that "you need to eat all your greens" and "don't buy excess" because in reality, there's an unlikely chance that the whole world will start paying more attention to that. We're all going to have food waste at some stage, but the important part is that you can know how to be more efficient with recycling all these leftover foods. 

• Cook the right amount of food. Most cook too much and leftovers if not eaten, go to waste.

• Food goes off before the use-by/best-before date. Make sure you check the dates of the products you buy. Remember to rotate-When you buy new grocery's you should move the old groceries to the front of your fridge to prevent waste. Doing so will limit the amount of money you have to spend on groceries.

• Use leftovers creatively. Jamie Oliver is a wiz at using leftovers for new meals. Here are some examples.

• Compost - Now, you don't need a compost bin or anything expensive. Literally, just use your leftover fruit and vegetable peels and mix them in with your garden soil; it gets rid of waste and helps your plants. 

• Shopping list- Now, if you already have one, make sure you are sticking to only what's on your list, and make sure you need it all. It's a great way to stay organised and make sure you don't forget anything. It's also a clever idea if you have a budget that you should be staying in. There are now shopping list apps for your phone or iPad to make life even easier.

Fashion Waste 
This, thankfully, is something that can we can get rid of. For those of you who don't know, fashion waste is the waste of yarn, fabric, garments, and more. There have been a few initiatives taken to recycle old clothing. 

• Clothing bins - These are usually put around by charities like The Smith Family and St. Vincent De Paul. Basically, you drop off any old clothing into these clothing bins and the charity comes around and collects it all, so they can either be re-worn or recycled. 

• H&M's garment collecting initiative - Now, as most of you would know, H&M is a clothing store. They've launched a global initiative that means customers can hand in unwanted garments. From this, they are properly recycling the materials. They are also on their way to creating a "closed loop system", which means being able to turn old garments into new fashion. 

Click on the link for more information on H&M's sustainability initiative.

-Taylor