Push to slash food waste over festive period

The UK throws away enough poultry to make 800 million Boxing Day curries, while the amount of potatoes that are binned could cook up Christmas Day roasties to satisfy for the nation for the next 48 years, according to new figures from non-governmental organisation WRAP.

And should Santa find himself struggling to cater for his reindeer, he only needs to head to the UK, where the amount of carrots thrown away every year could feed Rudolf and his eight companions a carrot a day, for nearly 500,000 years.

The figures have been published to coincide with the launch of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign which aims to help people save money while at the same time protecting the environment.

The promotion is providing a selection of recipes created specifically to cater for leftover Christmas staples, as well as offering advice on the best number of parsnips and other trimmings to serve, no matter the number of guests.

The campaign is being backed by supermarket Morrisons, which has recently announced plans to remove best before dates from its fresh fruit and vegetables to help customers reduce food waste and save money at Christmas.

Damon Johnson, head of technical produce and horticulture at the retailer, said: Now more than ever, it is important to help our customers to reduce their food waste. We hope by removing dates from our produce lines, changing our messaging on packs and by providing our customers with advice on storage, we can support households in extending the life of their food and save customers money this Christmas.