Keep food fresher for longer and cut down on your household waste

Posted by Amy, 29 April 2021

According to a study conducted by the British registered charity WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) last year, UK households waste 4.5m tonnes of food each year.
While this is a reduction of 7% per person over the past 3 years, the government’s waste advisory body has warned that individual households still need to be doing more to reduce this further (Guardian).

Why should we bother to reduce food waste?

Primarily, cutting down on food waste is better for the environment and will reduce your carbon footprint. As food breaks down it produces large amounts of methane gas which is harmful to the environment, reducing the amount of food that ends up in landfills will in turn reduce the amount of methane gas created.

Limiting your food waste also means that you aren’t buying and wasting food that otherwise could’ve been sold or donated to local charities by supermarkets, and lastly, reducing food waste will also save you money as you won’t need to buy as much food each week.

What can we do to reduce food waste?

There are many different ways that you can reduce your household food waste, we’ve listed some of our favourites below...

1. As fresh food such as fruit and vegetables ripen, they give off ethylene gas, the presence of this gas in the environment then also makes the food ripen faster.
This means that your fresh food is decomposing quicker than you might want it to and therefore you’ll be throwing it away before you’ve had chance to eat it. The good news is there are ways to reduce the ethylene gas surrounding your fresh food.

Fresh Discs are small round discs that sit in your fruit bowl, in your fridge or wherever you keep your fruit and veg. The discs are all natural and work by simply absorbing any ethylene gas in the air around them so that fruit and veg don’t ripen as quickly and stay fresher for longer.
Fresh Discs use proven technology and each disc lasts for 3 months.

2. Fresher for Longer Bags are reusable bags which can be used to store fruit and vegetables in your fridge. Each one of these clever bags is impregnated with a blend of natural minerals which are proven to keep fruit and vegetables fresher for longer!

Fresher for Longer Bags are sold in packs of 16 and can be used over and over again, so you don’t have to worry about waste.

3. One other way of keeping food fresher for longer so that you have less waste, is ensuring that their packaging bags are sealed after use! Devices such as the Seal 'n' Save are designed to do this exact job.
The Seal 'n' Save can seal any bag so that it is airtight and watertight in just seconds, so foods such as salads, crisps and meats can be resealed and kept for longer!

4. Lastly. investing in a fridge freshening device such as the Fridge Friend will extend the life of ALL food in your fridge, including fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy and fish!
The Fridge Friend keeps food fresher for up to 3x longer and will kill mould and bacteria whilst disinfecting the air in your fridge. It will save you money and cut down your household food waste.

Amy x

Founder, Must Have Ideas Ltd