10 tips for reducing food waste from Flawsome! Drinks
Globally, 30% of all food grown is wasted and most of it is edible! According to Wrap, the consumable food and drink we waste in the UK would fill 8 Wembley Stadiums, 90 Royal Albert Halls, 38 million wheelie bins, 3,600 Olympic swimming pools and 490,000 bin lorries.
The importance of businesses offering sustainable options: Karina Sudenyte, Co-Founder at Flawsome! Drinks
When food is wasted other things go to waste too… Money, water, and soil nutrients. Most food waste ends up in landfill, creating more than 22 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Research shows climate change is one of the biggest concerns for UK consumers and this impacts their buying habits. 61% of UK consumers are concerned about sustainability with just as many ‘choosing brands with good sustainability credentials’ and ‘increasingly weighing up alternative diets to improve their carbon footprint’, according to an EM Consumer Research Survey from October 2021. This means it is increasingly important for businesses to offer sustainable, climate-friendly options. 
The good news is, reducing and preventing food waste is one of the key solutions to mitigating climate change (Project Drawdown), that’s why we’re passionate about creating a world where no food is wasted. At Flawsome!, we want to make people feel good about saving food while having a positive impact on the world, and you can do it too with these 10 tips.
1. Buy wonky and surplus fruit and veg
We save wonky and surplus fruits from waste and transform them into wonderful drinks, so this is a biggie for us!
The aesthetic standards of fruit and vegetables in the UK is high, meaning people expect produce to look a certain way, despite fresh produce naturally being wonky! When produce is the ‘wrong’ shape, size and colour it is less likely to be bought by supermarkets and more likely to go to waste. To meet supermarket quotas of ‘perfect’ looking produce, farmers overproduce food, which also means surplus stocks go to waste too.
If you work with fresh fruits and vegetables, we encourage you to source locally grown wonky and surplus produce that can be rescued from waste. After all, these foods have the same nutrient content as ‘perfect’ looking produce and taste just as great – sometimes better!
2. Educate People
Businesses can hold influence within the communities they operate within. Many people don’t know:
- How much food is wasted
- Where waste happens (70% of post-farm-gate food waste happens in the home)
- Wonky produce is just as good as ‘perfect’ looking produce
- How important it is for the environment to prevent food waste
- How simple steps can have a big impact
Raising awareness about the issues of food waste and sharing food saving tips (we have plenty here), with your employees, your customers and your wider community is an essential step to preventing food waste.
An easy place to start is the difference between use-by and best before dates.
3. Understand Dates
Only half of the UK knows that food and drink past its Best Before date can be perfectly safe to consume and this leads to massive 180,00 tonnes of food being wasted! 
Most food will still be good to eat for a while after the best before date, often months later! Too Good To Go’s ‘Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste!’ campaign is a really fun way to educate people. The campaign simply encourages people to look and smell for signs of degradation, like mould and unpleasant smells. If both are ok, they suggest having a little taste. If the product tastes as expected, then it’s good to consume!
4. Contact your government representatives
Food waste accounts for approximately 10% of all global greenhouse gases, making it a big contributor to climate change and an important area to tackle. Luckily, there are sometimes simple solutions to fix it! For example, some areas don’t have organic matter/brown bin collection, meaning all that food waste in these areas goes to landfill and contributes to climate change through greenhouse gases. Adding brown bin collections is a simple fix!
Working to get these fixes in place may take lots of support from the wider community but, as a business, a quick and easy way to contribute is to contact your local representatives and let them know you are a business in support of preventing food waste and offer solutions that would work for you. Emailing a local representative, such as an MP or councillor, only takes 5-10 minutes but can go a long way to creating solutions that reduce the emissions associated with food waste.
5. Turn down the fridge
This one is simple… Keeping the fridge below 5c keeps food fresher for longer! Food starting to go off before we have a chance to use it is a key reason for food waste. Items like milk can begin to sour and leafy greens can wilt quickly in a warmer fridge. Simply turning the fridge down a few degrees optimises the lifespan of fresh goods and gives you more time to use things up or sell them.
6. Compost
Reduce your food waste by composting food scraps! Composting is a beneficial way to use up scrap food because the nutrients fertilise soil and help plants grow. If you don’t have space or capacity for compost, alternative options include private collection services or working with a community garden, allotment or farm.
7. Repurpose Waste
Some ‘waste’ products can be reused! For instance, vegetable peels can be used for stock or soups, coffee grounds can be used as a natural body scrub and juice can be frozen into ice cubes and added to smoothies or cocktails. There’s also the option of preserving foods that might not get used up. Fermenting, freezing, pickling and dying are all preservation methods that help prevent food waste. We challenge you to see if you can turn food waste into profit!
8. Donate Instead of Discard
Big chains have been called out in the media for the amount of edible food that is wasted and sent to landfill. A solution is to divert foods nearing use-by and best before dates to food kitchens and food banks so they have the chance to be used up.
Not only does this help your business cut down on food waste, it also helps to support people within your community. 
9. Use Food Waste Apps
Apps like Too Good To Go and Olio are great resources for last-minute food rescue. You’ll be surprised by how many people are willing to collect consumables to save money and prevent items from going to waste.
10. Support Food Waste Innovators
When Flawsome! was founded, it was one of a few businesses tackling food waste. Now, there are dozens of popular brands with a commitment to fighting food waste, transforming the unwanted into much-loved products. A simple way of tackling food waste is to support brands like us. With the help of businesses like you, we’ve managed to divert over 34 million fruits from waste! You can read more about our positive impacts here.
How To Stock up on Flawsome! today
Delicious Ideas Food Group supply snacks, confectionery and beverages including Flawsome! to thousands of sites around the UK. If you are a hotel, pub, café, co-working space, deli, farm shop or more, set up an account here and get wholesale deliciousness delivered to your site today!
If you have any questions or just want to find out a bit more about our service, get in touch with a member of our sales team today on 01733 239003.
