Thursday 14 October 2010

Waste Not, Want Not


It’s that time of year again, the nights are drawing in and before you know it you’ll be digging out your winter jumpers and bracing yourself for the cold. But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom - the season’s still abundant and fruitful.


Natural, sustainable foods: apples, blackberries, nettles, rowan berries, chequer berries, haw berries, sloes, chestnuts, walnuts and of course, mushrooms are all at their best at this time of year. With a little elbow grease and imagination, they can be transformed into fine delicacies and mouth-watering morsels. There are now plenty of resources to offer advice about natural food and foraging. The Channel 4 website is a good start and www.wildmanwildfood.co.uk has some useful links.


It’s not just hedgerow foraging that’s become increasingly popular, ‘Freeganism’ encourages its followers to find free food - be it produced, naturally sourced or deemed past its best by supermarkets and restaurants. The BBC’s very entertaining ‘Great British Waste Menu’ really highlights the issue. In Britain we throw away 3.3 million tonnes of food every year, most of which could have been eaten. The website www.lovefoodhatewaste.com has some great tips and recipe ideas about reusing leftovers and creating less waste.


It’s not just physical resources that get wasted. In the workplace we don’t always make the most of our human ones either. We’d love to help you to dig a little deeper to get more out of the natural resources around you. It’s amazing what you find when you take a little time to look a bit further afield.


Waste is very much on our minds this October as we work closely with a major telecommunications company to transform their unwanted stationery and promotional products into fully Re-sourced ones. It’s part of an internal campaign designed to encourage their own staff and customers to think again about waste. If you’d like to know more about what we’re doing to help them or have items waiting to be ‘recycled and renewed’, get in touch - we’d love to talk to you about our ideas.