Eco Solutions to Minimise Your Waste

When we’re at the supermarket, it’s easy to get distracted from our lists by offers and cravings. But often this means we end up with more than we can eat. If you’re fridge is looking worryingly full, don’t worry, your food doesn’t have to go to waste.

With eco food storage ideas and preserving bags, it’s easy to ensure that your grocery shop lasts longer, and that nothing gets thrown away.

How to Reduce Food Waste at Home

Planning recipes in advance and shopping for ingredients that work across several of your meals is a great way to keep everyone fed and keep food waste to a minimum. From the moment you bring fresh produce home it’s a challenge to keep it at its best, but there are lots of ways you can help keep your shop as fresh as the day it was bought.

Preserve Your Pantry Essentials

Foods like dried pasta, pulses and flour should keep in the cupboard for a long time. That’s if you store them properly. Keeping these foods preserved in air-tight food containers will help keep your kitchen organised and your dry foods at their best.

With some foods, like cereals, moving them to a food storage dispenser box actually makes life easier. You can pour out your breakfast without faffing with boxes and bags. Plus, these see-through containers mean you can keep on eye on how much food you have left. These little reminders will keep your shopping list focused!

Frozen, Refrigerated and Still Fresh

Freezing fruits and vegetables is a great way to lock in their nutrition. When you defrost them, they’ll have all the goodness of freshly picked produce. If you’re fruit bowl is overflowing, then bananas and berries can be popped into freezer bags for another day. Or you could pre-blend smoothies or soups and freeze them with our Soup n Sauce Press Seal Freezer Bags.

To protect vegetables in the fridge, our trusty Stayfresh Longer Bags ensure fresh produce ends up on your plate, rather than in the bin. The bags’ design allows whatever’s inside to breathe, keeping the contents in optimum conditions. Soft fruit, veg, salad leaves and herbs will also stay crisp and well preserved in our Large Fridge Store box. These eco food storage solutions are a great way to keep your kitchen storage spaces organised too.

Almost all of our fridge and freezer food containers can be cleaned once you’ve used up the contents. So, these reusable freezer bags won’t just end up in the bin after a single use.

Give leftovers some love

Don’t throw leftovers away – there’s usually something else you can do with them! Use a soup maker to blitz together your leftover dinners into a delicious soup, or knock together a bubble and squeak by bunging everything into the air fryer.

A portion of leftover rice can easily be transformed into delicious fried rice – and don’t worry, it’s ok to reheat rice as long as you make sure it’s piping hot before you tuck in. The important bit is remembering to store rice in the fridge as soon as it cools down and never keep it for longer than a day.

Did you know that freezing bread and keeping pasta in the fridge reduces the calorific value? Your body digests it differently, causing fewer calories to be absorbed. So, slice up some of your loaf and pop it in the freezer for later weeks. And pop any leftover pasta into a reusable food container and leave it in the fridge so it can become tomorrow’s light and healthy pasta salad.

A few leftover morsels of chicken can add bags of flavour to a steaming bowl of ramen soup. Or take leftover bolognese and create a hot and delectable toastie using a microwave grill press.

Seal the Deal on Food Savings

Lemon wedges, half avocados, and onions can all live to be eaten another day with these silicon stretch pods. Perfect for a breakfast of guacamole on toast! Or, if you’re leftovers aren’t in an easy-to-pack shape, then use a vacuum food storage bag to preserve any number of worthwhile edibles. These can help to keep just-bought food or leftovers fresh for up to five times longer than standard storage containers.

Sometimes the best way we can save our food from being ruined is by protecting it whilst we travel. Bananas, for instance, are a delicate lunchbox favourite. With a banana guard, your fruit won’t become bruised or mushy. The riper the fruit, the more vulnerable they are. So keep your bunch fresh by refrigerating them in the reusable Lakeland Yellow Banana Bag – who said food storage can’t be fun?

More ways to avoid waste

• If you’re into juicing, we’ve got a food saving tip for you. Many juicers and blenders will leave behind peel, pulp, and pith. But this can be the most nutritious part of the fruit or vegetable! Put that precious pulp to good use – turn carrot leftovers into cake, let apple pieces have a second life in an apple crumble, and elevate your beetroot scraps by making a spicy ketchup.
• When it comes to fresh herbs, you inevitably don’t use the whole packet. But don’t throw them away – freezing them in olive oil means they’ll be perfect for the next recipe you need them for. You can use ice cube trays to make portion-perfect blocks.
• If your eggs are about to go out of date, you can boil them and they’ll keep in their shells for up to a week in the fridge. Make sure you hard boil them – our in-the-pan egg timer can help with that. You could even write on the shell the date you cooked them as a handy reminder – what a cracking idea!
• And did you know you can even freeze eggs? Just crack them and store them in a food container; simply defrost them overnight in the fridge when you’re ready to use them again.