We all love food – whether we’re growing it, cooking it or just eating it – but what happens to the food that doesn’t quite reach our mouths?

Over 50% of all the food waste thrown away in the UK each year comes from our homes and of this half of this is food that we could have eaten. We waste around 5million potatoes and 2 million tomatoes every day and we even throw away half of the salad we buy. And when it comes to bread we really don’t use our loaf as we waste 37million slices every day!

This behaviour is damaging to the environment, if we all stopped wasting food the benefit to the planet would be equivalent to taking 1 in every 5 cars off the road. And don’t forget, wasting food is expensive, costing the average household £480 a year – that’s £50 per month!

What is surprising is that this can be so easily avoided. Cory Environmental, working with Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, provides a weekly food waste collection service. It couldn’t be simpler; the little caddy goes in your kitchen for all your fruit and vegetable peelings, bones, tea bags, plate scrapings and other leftover food. Once full you can then either wrap up the food waste into parcels of newspaper or buy a special compostable liner before putting them into your larger blue food waste bin. It then gets collected every week from the kerbside and is turned into compost where it can then be used to help grow new produce.

And whilst some food waste is unavoidable (such as vegetable peelings and bones) half of it could have been eaten. It is this ‘avoidable’ food waste that we want to reduce. Southend-on-Sea Borough Council is challenging residents to produce no avoidable food waste for a week. The challenge will take place on 18-24 June to coincide with National Recycle Week. It’ just a bit of fun and for some people this may only require some fine tuning of their shopping list or an adjustment to their kitchen scales, for others it will require changing an entire family’s behaviour but of course the gains are greater.

But don’t worry, you’re not alone. We will be on hand to help with the some top tips on portion control, storage and some useful recipes to use up those products that are on the edge of going in the bin. Across the Borough, local people and communities will be getting involved and doing their bit to reduce food waste and to help others achieve their goals. Give it a go and see if you can achieve the Southend food waste challenge!

To register visit http://www.recycleforsouthend.org/fww_register.php