Festivities, food waste and the future

01:43 - 03:09

Speaker 1: Good afternoon everybody and welcome to this, the last Ask the expert of 2023.

In today's episode, I'm going to be talking to three experts from different areas of Veolia

about the work that they do with business, with communities to reduce food waste, not

just at Christmas, but all year round.

We'll hear about the impact of food waste for both businesses and residents, practical

and helpful tips to reduce food waste, particularly over the festive season and also initiatives

we have in place and projects that support food donations.

Before we tuck in, I have to say happy birthday to Veolia, we are 170 years old today.

Veolia was formed with the purpose of sorting out and ending cholera in water systems in

the city of Lyon, in France.

That ethic, that process has captured and continued throughout Veolia.

So hopefully today we're going to hear about how Veolia is still acting in the estress

society and the world at large.

Thank you for all joining me on this live session and I'd like to introduce you to my

three heroes for the day, Jamie Welsh, Emilie Escudero and Luke Ford.

Would you like to introduce yourself Jamie, tell people who you are.

03:10 - 03:24

Speaker 2: Thank you Martyn.

My name is Jamie Welsh, I'm a strategic account manager.

I work in our national accounts team and we work with some of the largest and grocery

and other kind of retailers, leisure and hospitality organisations in the UK.

03:25 - 03:31

Speaker 1: Fabulous.

Thanks for joining us, Jamie.

Emily, would you like to tell us who you are and what you do?

03:32 - 03:53

Speaker 3: Yes, hi, good afternoon. I'm Emily.

I'm the communication manager for the Veolia contract in South end on sea in Essex.

So Veolia has been delivering the recycling and waste collection service in South and

since 2015 and I work in partnership with the local authority on a range of projects

and initiatives to increase participation in the recycling service and increase recycling rates.

03:54 - 04:03

Speaker 1: Fabulous.

I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit more about that very shortly.

Luke, my friend Luke. Let everybody else meet you. Tell us who you are.

04:04 - 04:40

Speaker 4: Hi Martyn.

I'm Luke Ford, general manager of food strategy and development, sitting in the corporate

development department. That enables me to work across all of our different divisions.

Most divisions within Veolia come across food waste in one way or another and yeah, basically work to place our food waste in the right place, apply the principles of the waste hierarchy generally across the board and then also I lead a lot of our projects that look at innovative solutions in terms of handling and treating food waste.

04:41 - 05:02

Speaker 1: Excellent.

So a lot to hear from you later.

This LinkedIn live is titled Festivities, Food Waste and the Future.

Jamie, I'm going to come to you first.

You work with a lot of our commercial customers, particularly supermarkets and retailers.

What impact does Christmas have on them in the terms of wasting general and specifically

food waste?

05:03 - 07:54

Speaker 2: Thanks Martyn.

So yeah, great questions.

Obviously, as I'm sure everyone can appreciate Christmas and this time of year is an incredibly busy year for retailers and particularly supermarkets as they look to ultimately meet the needs of the general consumer and their customers going into this time of year to

ultimately all celebrate and kind of have a great time.

There's two, with the kind of the supermarkets, there's two particularly significant changes

that come into effect which are ultimately driven towards attracting customers into their

stores.

One is, as consumers, we love to see full shelves in store availability of the large range of

items that supermarkets supply is incredibly important to the consumer into supermarkets.

We go out, we all need our various items of milk and meat and veg and whatever else it

might be and having those full shelves is incredibly important.

The other significant thing that happens this time of year as you’ll seen from supermarket

adverts.

They introduce a lot of kind of interesting new and exciting seasonal ranges, different

types of products, there's always some sort of trend this year, I'm led to believe it's

brown butter, flavoured things and those two things kind of combined ultimately to an extent

generate more food waste at this time of year.

Additionally, we'd see significant increases in other types of waste and recycling.

So significant amounts of packaging waste, recycling, cardboard and plastic film which

we support our customers to recycle and then I'm sure everyone's done this as they're out

and about in the shops, there's a big kind of food on the go offering, coffee on the go,

lunches on the go.

That packaging ultimately, more people aren't about an increased footfall, increases the

amount of waste and packaging and recyclability that goes on.

The other thing that really happens as well as I said before is the amount of stock that

goes into our supermarkets and retailers significantly increases but what that does

also increase the opportunity for supermarkets in particular to generate more surplus that

is redistributed for good use.

If you look at a lot of the supermarkets, this time of year, there's a significant focus

on kind of free meals for disadvantaged people, for children, for old people, increases in

the amount of food that's sent to charities and their redistribution partners.

So whilst there is more waste produced this time of year, not just in supermarkets but

generally across the economy and in our homes, they're doing some great things because of

that kind of opportunity, I guess, that presents.

07:55 - 07:56

Speaker 1: Fabulous.

Did you say brown butter?

07:58 - 08:02

Speaker 2: Brown butter apparently is the flavour of Christmas 2023.

08:03 - 08:31

Speaker 1: I will be very popular in the pub tonight when I can announce that fact to the world.

I get it, the supply chains and the exchanges in materials, there is a pressure on the supermarkets but it's great to hear from your experience that they are addressing the surplus in a right way and a responsible way. But it's great to hear they're doing it but why is it important that our customers dispose of food waste correctly?

08:34 - 09:25

Speaker 2:  So I'm going to have to challenge you back on that one Martyn because the focus isn't so

much around how our supermarkets dispose of their waste.

It's how they use it as a valuable resource.

So not just to feed people and that's ultimately the purpose of a supermarket is to feed people.

And whether that's through selling those products or whether it's through redistributing

the surplus, that is their ultimate aim and goal and it's their first part of call it

all times.

Yes, there's always items and elements of that kind of food surplus that do go to waste

and you're absolutely right. But there's more options than just disposal which Luke has kind of touched on in his introduction talking about the food waste hierarchy which I'm sure he'd love to go into detail about.

09:25 - 13:57

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yes. So obviously the food waste hierarchy generally the general principle is can you feed a human with it? So obviously from a supermarket's perspective and staying with that grocery theme, their primary intention is to sell it full price.

Yeah.

If the can’t sell it full price rather than it's going somewhere else, can they sell it discounted

whether that's yellow sticker or whether that is through a digital app, it's obviously rising

in popularity recently.

And I think the question as well is can they kind of give it to a human as long as it doesn't

end up in the bin and potentially ending up outside of the optimal routes that we want

to see it go. And then you start looking into the other areas and that's sort of where a lot of our expertise comes in and certainly from my team. And yeah, I think it's about looking at waste as a whole, what's the composition and then trying to map out the optimal route for that. So after human chains, so everything that we've just discussed there comes basically animal feed. Yeah. And when I say animal feed, I think we need to sort of think what counts as an animal, is that livestock, is it agriculture, is it feeding it to our pets, is it potentially

feeding it to insects. And I think that bracket is a very important bracket because one, it sort of keeps with this thinking of not sending food to a waste use.

If you feed it to an animal, it isn't classified as waste and there are very, very large volumes within certainly a supermarket portfolio, but then also other sectors that we service as well that can go into that sector. And yeah, I mean, the reason that it's important, the reason that the food waste hierarchy sort of is established generally is as you move down the waste hierarchy, the carbon footprint gets higher. And if you want to sort of think about that, then you kind of flip it on its head. If we end up landfilling food, we'll lose an opportunity to create renewable energy from it.

It may break down in a landfill and turn into methane and other harmful gases eventually

end up in the atmosphere potentially.

If we have material that could go to animal use and we create green energy from it from

AD, we've lost an opportunity to offset land use and prevent fertilizer and water being

use as a replacement for feedweed.

If we feed an animal instead of feeding a person, it's an inefficient use of energy.

An animal needs a lot of energy to grow into a fully grown animal that we can then eat.

So that makes it sound like it's very, very simplistic.

I'm an advocate of all the roots, but everything needs to be mapped appropriately.

We want to send the right food into the right, uh, valourisation route. 

So yeah, I mean, what I've described there, it sounds very, very simple.

It's almost like you can just map it out, you can get a menu and just sort of say, this

should go there, that should go there.

But realistically, I think there are massive, massive challenges in being able to do that.

You know, obviously, I know we're very heavily focused on grocery at the moment, but trying

to segregate those into different fractions, trying to unify an approach across a sector

generally, trying to take the products that we are segregating and turn them into something

that is actually safe for an animal to use without biosecurity issues, without reputational

concerns, making sure that it actually does end up in an animal's mouth.

And I think you can see, like from working across many, many sectors, there's over 180

businesses have signed up to WRAPS quarter commitments to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030, everyone's really, really clearly focused on food waste reduction. And I think it's great but from my perspective, I think the drive from waste management has to be really, really clear. I think we need to try and unify the strategies to make it simplistic. We create part of the value proposition and we become part of the value chain and we're doing a lot of work on that. It's really, really promising.

13:59 - 14:22

Speaker 1: Thanks, Luke, I don't think I'll ever use the word dispose again, Jamie.

I feel that I have asked the experts and I have been told by the experts, it's not disposal.

But to go on from that, and thank you for explaining that Luke and Jamie, but Jamie,

how are we helping our customers not only at Christmas, but throughout the year?

What initiatives are in place to support them to help them tackle food waste?

14:24 - 17:01

Speaker 2: Yes, so we do some fantastic work with our customers.

So within our grocery retail team in particular, a large element of the solution that we provide

for our customers is built around our teams of national account executives.

So we've got 19 people that make up our green team. They're out on the road, day in, day out, completing somewhere in the region of 10,000 kind of store visits a year across that full team. And ultimately, their purpose is to coach store colleagues in the correct processes

in terms of what Luke was saying, whether it's the waste hierarchy or what food waste

hierarchy or whether it's looking at cardboard recycling or packaging or other types of packaging recycling.

So we have a significant presence across the grocery retail sector that supports those

store colleagues to do the right thing when they're presented with the opportunity ultimately

to, as Luke said, put something in the right place effectively.

So we'd kind of work with them on how they follow the correct processes for donation,

of food services, all of the major supermarkets have incredible partnerships with charities,

with food surplus redistribution partners. And we do our part in supporting those store colleagues, to follow the right processes there. We've done some great work in terms of segregating bread and bakery waste and other kind of seasonal items, pumpkins, for example, and driving those into animal feed routes. And then kind of really back to basic stuff as well. So if you think about a grocery retailer, they've got to try and get potentially hundreds of thousands of people to do the right thing in the right way every day and it's normally in feet.

So we think really back to basics in terms of supporting them to reduce kind of contamination

of any of their recycling streams, whether that's food or card or anything like that as

well, to ultimately maximize the value, whether it's a commodity value, kind of pounds of

pence value, or whether it's a value, again, as Luke was saying in terms of an energy use

or an animal feed use or whatever it might be.

So we do some great work.

We've got lots of kind of longstanding partnerships, which we've had the opportunity to do this great work over a very long time. And we've got, as Luke was saying, there's lots of changes coming in terms of tech, in terms of solutions that we really can't wait to obviously get stuck into as well.

17:01 - 17:37

Speaker 1: Thank you very much.

One of the things that I enjoy about Veolia and I know many of my colleagues enjoy, and

from recent research with our customers, one of the things they see as being something

of differentiates Veolia is the length and breadth and depth of our service line.

So we've been talking about our work with our commercial customers that's in that section

of the food chain. Let's go a little bit further down the food chain now.

I want to talk to you, Emily, because you're responsible and you're going to talk to us

us I guess about me and you, the consumers, and what happens with the food waste in the

Home.

17:37 - 21:39 

Speaker 3: That's right.

In Southend and we service just over 71,000 low-rise properties across the city and over

600 communal bin stores. And so residents in Southend we have a weekly food waste collection.

And another thing we do in Southend is that every couple of years we do a customer satisfaction

survey to get our feedback on the service and improve it, but we can also gather a lot

of data to inform all the communication campaigns we deliver.

So for example, thanks to the survey, we know that we can ask people what is their preferred way of receiving information on the service. We know that it's still leaflet for the door. So for example, recently we delivered a campaign where we delivered over 27,000 leaflets to the properties in the 10 collection rounds with the lowest food waste tonnages per property per week. And so but we also know that people get a lot of leaflet for the door every day. So we wanted to catch that attention. So we drafted it from the viewpoint of one of our operatives. So we had the picture of one of our operatives who works in the Southend contract to try and give a human face to the service. And it was all returned from his point of view and why it's important to recycle food waste.

Thanks to the survey, we know as well that the main motivation for people when it comes

to recycling is the environmental benefits. So we were giving information about environmental benefits, the food waste recycling journey, because the general public doesn't really know about an aerobic digestion and that we can actually produce electricity with the left with waste, which is amazing.

So we had information like this in the leaflet and also thanks to the survey, we know that.

So we asked questions such as, do you recycle food waste and if not, why not?

So we can identify the barriers to recycling and participating in the service and address

with buyers in our communication campaigns.

So we know actually the main reason as to why people are not recycling their food waste

is because we don't have the bin. So we made sure that in the leaflet, it was really obvious the part about how to order a new caddy.We include the QR code, which links directly to the local authority portal where people can order a new kitchen or a kerbside caddy for free.

And then we have a crew who delivers the caddy straight to people's houses because really

if we want people to recycling, the recycling behaviour and the recycling option needs to

be the easier option. So that's what we do in Southend

We actually deliver food waste liners to every resident twice a year.

We can also collect liners for free from libraries or they're more online, but we also deliver

to peoples step.

And same thing with the caddy and the kitchen caddy, we're always free and we deliver them

to them to make it as easy as possible to participate in the service.

But then more and more, we also do digital campaigns.

So recently we did a campaign on Facebook and Instagram, so paid campaigns.

So even if people don't follow the Southend and City Council social media, they will still

see the person their feed.

And that was a campaign about items with low capture rates and food waste is one of them.

And over two weeks, we managed to reach over 380,000 residents and we also managed to reach younger demographics, which with the leaflet, we might not be able to reach as much because if people, younger people are more likely to live in a HMO with those housemates.

And so we don't really pay attention to the leaflet as much if the person directly addressed to them. So that's why it's also great to do digital campaign to reach younger demographics.

So really we have one message, which is that we want people to recycle their food waste.

And then we have, we use different messages and different tones and we tailor the message

to the audience we want to talk to.

21:39 - 21:57

Speaker 1: Congratulations Emily. What a fabulous process and effort.

Really do appreciate that. But what else can residents do, especially at this time of year, to reduce the amount of food waste that they create?

Do you have any suggestions or tips to help anybody watching or listening back?

21:58 - 25:01

Speaker 3

Yes.

So of course we want people to recycle their food waste and some food waste isn't avoidable such as vegetable peeling or bones.

We talked earlier about the food waste hierarchy and obviously the best waste is the one we

don't produce. Moreover, when we know that 70% of the food waste wasted by UK residents is wasted in their house. So after the, it's not a supermarket level, it's actually into house.

So have a few tips and tricks. It's pretty basic but it actually does make a difference, for example, things like checking your fridge temperature. It should be between 0 and 5 degrees or making the most of your freezer. So there's a lot of meals which can be frozen and then defrosted and it tastes just as nice like curries, pasta dishes, stews.

If you freeze a portion for a meal, then it's just easy one evening to defrost it.

One tip is to label what it is because once you think you remember it for something

frozen, once everything is frozen, just everything looks the same. So it's really hard to say why it's so labeled it and then freeze it. And then things like planning meals and shopping with the list. I think we've all been in the supermarket trying to do a weekly food shop and we don't have a list or we don't know what we want to cook and we're getting distracted by all the discounts and then maybe we're hungry and everything looks delicious and we just go back home with the most random shop and then we can't really cook any meals out of it.

So planning meals and shopping with the list and actually when it comes to Christmas, the

BBC Good Food website has a really handy Christmas specific portion planner.

So I would recommend checking this out. Maybe you don't have to buy something just because it is traditional. So for example, brussels sprouts I mean, I'm not picking on brussel sprouts I love brussel sprouts. But if people don't like them, they shouldn't feel like they should buy them just because it's traditional in the Christmas meal.

And then finally, if you do have leftovers, just reducing them in a creative way.

So the team at Veolia done a great job creating a lot of videos, festive videos with tips

and tricks to have a more sustainable Christmas. So I include, for example, sustainable decorations or gifts, but also recipes. So there is some videos about making leftover turkey noodles or Christmas pudding sundaes. So they can be found on the Veolia UK social media channels or on the social media accounts of the local authority partners.So for example, on the staff and social media channels.

And finally, I've seen that super markets are also helping us using leftover in a creative

Way. I know that's Sainsbury’s for example, for a few years, we've been using Sainsbury’s Boxing Day curry sauce to help us transform our leftover turkey into homemade curry on Boxing Day. So yeah, we, just a few tips and tricks, but I would recommend checking out the Love Food Hate Waste website because there are tonnes of recipes and even more tips.

Speaker 1

25:02 - 25:19: Perfect. Thank you very much. And it just shows how it's all linked.

Luke, your work seems really interesting to me.

I know a little bit about it, but with a lot of innovative stuff going on, after all the

options to reduce food waste have been exhaustive, what happens to the food that does go to waste?

Speaker 3

25:20 - 30:16

Yeah, so I guess it's a little bit of an extension of what we spoke about before.

I think for anything at all that obviously we try and apply the waste hierarchy where possible. I think we have this sort of cut off where anything that could theoretically be used

to feed an animal in theory could go above that point. But anything post-consumer or the vast majority of food that has animal products in it or packaging challenges, anaerobic digestion is the primary recycling route for that. And I think where we are generally, the waste management sector as a whole, I would say that is probably the primary recycling route for a lot of the volumes that are handled. Yeah, I mean, anaerobic digestion, it's a great technology. The UK market is reasonably, reasonably mature. I think there's somewhere in the region of 115 plants, quite a few of those, over half have front-end deep packaging capability as well. And yeah, I mean, obviously it creates either electricity, gas, and then there's a fertiliser product as well when the food waste is all broken down.

So it is a very sort of good solution, but it fits that category of being waste.

And yeah, my focus really is taking as much as possible and taking it outside of the

waste hierarchy. And yeah, as we sort of spoke before, I think there's a huge number of reasons why a lot of food waste goes into AD that could go into other uses.

And I think it's operational. I think there's challenges and yeah, we've spent a lot of time looking at it and trying to work out what are those challenges and how do we get to the bottom of it.

So yeah, if we're talking about segregation, we have to think about what is the route.

Are we talking about stock feed?

Are we talking about feeding animals, ruminants, and how are we going to do that?

How are we going to segregate into categories where we can extrapolate from a food waste

fraction, something that is going to be suitable to feed an animal with?

If we're going to do that, do we break it down into individual categories?

Going back to grocery, how do we get 700, 800 plus stores to do the same thing?

We absolutely, contamination is just something that we can't have.

If we sending it, for example, into animal feed, there cannot be any meat products in it.

So how do you get 700, 800 stores to segregate into individual sections and then sort of

almost guarantee that there's going to be no way of an animal product getting into that.

Or if it does get into it, that it's blocked at some part in the supply chain.

And if it is identified, how do we find out exactly where it's come from?

What are the reasons that it got in there?

How do we stop it from happening again?

And these are all things that we've had to think about.

How do we actually make an animal feed product out of it?

How do we make it something that's actually safe?

Is it going to be solid?

Is it going to be liquid?

Are we turning solid into a liquid?

How do we make sure there's a market for it?

And yeah, it sounds like a little bit of a supply chain sort of formality.

How do you actually guarantee that what you've gone to all this effort of segregating and

creating?

How do you make sure it actually ends up on the farm and in an animal's mouth or into

another animal route and not actually in an AD plan when anaerobic digestion at the minute,

I think commercially seems to be able to outperform these non-waste uses.

So there's a huge amount of challenges and it's about mapping it, it's about attitude.

And again, as I go back to before, I want to create the solutions.

I want to be able to say, we've thought about this.

We've been able to map it out all the way through its journey.

We can give you the categories.

We can give you the routes.

We've got the method of checking the contamination.

We know how it works.

If there's issues, this is what we do with remedy it.

We build that into a full value proposition that can be applied across several clients

or even cross sector as well.

Speaker 1

30:18 - 30:36: Amazing.

Absolutely amazing. Just the depth of understanding.

I really am flattered by the expertise that I've been joined by today. Thank you.

Looking ahead now Luke to 2024, what do you think will be the most innovative food waste solution?

What's going to be the legislative driver behind it?

Speaker 4

30:37 - 36:42

So we're always forward thinking. We're always forward thinking.

And obviously, I've spoken about AD. It's relatively mature.

And I think going into your question there, simpler recycling, we kind of all know more or less

what it is. Food waste collections have become mandatory in Scotland.

It's been rolled out in Wales and then we're only a few years away from the same thing happening in England. And I think from my perspective, obviously food waste being segregated in the house, I think being able to valorize it through an AD plant is a good thing.

But I actually think it has, although there are a lot of challenges in implementing it

from a council perspective, and I know that there's costs and I know that there's already

sort of maybe commitments in terms of where that volume should sit and things like that.

But I think from my perspective, it opens up a huge, huge amount of opportunity.

And I'll lead on to the innovation very, very shortly. But what I think that's going to do is I think it's going to drive market change. Yeah, so at the minute, I don't realistically think there's enough suitable feedstock to go around all of the waste fed AD plants and that drives a very, very competitive market. So the forecast that we have are that mandatory food waste collections across businesses and households can potentially put between 1 and 1.8 million tons of food waste into AD plants. And that's post consumer. That is going exactly where it's meant to go.

There isn't really anything that I foresee being a massively innovative way of handling

that type of food waste. For me, I think post consumer should absolutely end up in AD.

But what I want that to do is I want the market for rebates to be able to flatten and go down

over time. The market should hopefully become less competitive as that volume hits the market.

And what that does from the way that I see it, is it stops AD plants going after the food

waste that shouldn't be going into the AD plants. So I don't want to be seeing AD plants buying up bread, buying up brewers grains, all of these volumes that could be fed to animals. And I think, again, we're going to go into it in a little bit. But I think that is going to unlock some of the solutions that are going to be put in and for a lot of the businesses that have signed up to initiatives such as Courtauld to be able to achieve their aims.

In terms of the solutions of tomorrow, I don't believe legitimate and mature and flexible

animal feed provision is fully available nationally across the UK and that is obviously something we're looking at. Food waste as a concept has been fed to livestock for a very long time. It’s almost like a tomorrow's solution is something from yesterday.

It's just adapted and changed to meet the current market requirements.

But I think the big buzz, and I use that word figuratively, I guess, is around black

soilderfly bio conversion. So the idea is that we create a blend of non-animal byproducts food waste. We create a substrate and then we feed it to juvenile black soldierfly larvae maggots. And then basically over the next nine days, so this could be done in trays or in racks on an industrial scale, they then grow to somewhat maturity and they're harvested at about the nine day stage. So when they're harvested, they're then separated and you have two or three products, depending on the process.

You essentially have larvae, you have insect oil, and then you have what's left, which

is the insect excrement skin, any bits of food that are left over.

And the target markets for the larvae are pet food, agriculture, and poultry, and the

frost can be used as a fertilizer.

So Veolia does this in Malaysia, we have a live site, and we've been working with that

team for quite a while, trying to draw on their expertise to be able to apply the concept

to the UK market. And I think what is exciting about the solution is that there are markets for this such as pet food that may at some stage in the future make things a lot easier.

Because if it is going into pet food, why can we not use pre-consumer ADP in that mix?

And then you have a non waste use without the enormous challenges of segregation attached to it. Now, I don't want anybody to sort of listen to this today and think, oh, well, we're not going to bother segregating because this is just around the corner because I don't think there's a capacity for it or the market is going to be anywhere near big enough to cater for all the food waste that is being produced. But I think it is absolutely exciting nonetheless.

Yeah, I mean, the larvae themselves, when you process them into a product, if they're

going into poultry, I mean, obviously it could be a replacement for soy, which has a very,

very nice carbon offset potential attached to it. With pet food, it's an offset for prime meat And again, it is very, very exciting. But I don't see anybody breaking industrial scale ceiling in 2024. I think it could be a little bit after that. But it's a very exciting technology.

Yeah, what's this space?

Speaker 1

36:43 - 36:58

Fabulous.

I can't believe how we've gone from brown butter to getting teenagers to interact with

us to black soldier fly in 30 minutes.

Amazing.Thank you very much.

Thanks to the three of you.

I've got one more question for each of you.

And that is, how are you going to reduce your food waste over Christmas?

Luke?

Speaker 4

37:00 - 37:52

Oh, how am I going to, right, okay.

I need to, I need to have a little bit of a think about this one.

So I am not going to leave anything on my plate whatsoever.

Yeah. I am definitely going to drink all of my beer before it expires. I think that will really help the environment if I do that.

And yeah, I'm going to try and buy a bit less every single year. I honestly, I'm still eating cheese in April. I see it and I want all the different types of cheese and I'm just, I'm living this little cheese mentality. And to be honest, I'm going to have to be honest to say I do probably get to a point where I'm sick of looking at it some of it goes in the bin. I'm sorry.

I'm not going to do it this year. We're all, well, we're on the 14th of December.

I'm not bought any cheese. I'm doing all right.

Speaker 1

37:53 

Good man.

You keep trying.

Emily, what are you going to do?

Speaker 3

37:54 - 38:25

I'm going back home in France for Christmas, like every year.

So we're quite a small family. So I think we'll try and be mindful not to cook too much.

But to be fair, the food is so good in France, that I don't mind having to eat leftovers

for a few days after Christmas. And my partner is coming with me this year and he is English and he absolutely loves the French wine and cheese and all the food as well.

So I'm not too worried, but if there is anything, any leftovers, it will help us finish that

as well.

Speaker 1 

38:26 - 38:30

Luke, if you don't manage it, I think I know somewhere I can see.

Jamie, what are you going to do?

Speaker 2

38:31 - 39:22

So for the first time this year, we're actually going to go to a restaurant for Christmas

dinner. So, you know, I think we know restaurants certainly run a lot more efficiently than

my house does. So hopefully there'll be less food waste associated with that.

Another thing that if my wife watches, I'm going to get in trouble for, I'm going to

make sure she doesn't do what she can often do in the supermarket, walk around, grab a

few things and then dump them back on the wrong shelf.

And that is a bit of a cardinal sin and does produce some food waste in supermarkets.

And time for the small violin to come out, I'm actually working over Christmas anyway.

So there will be a huge amount of Twixmas celebrations in my house.

So hopefully, not be too much food waste coming from some big celebrations between Christmas and New Year for us.

Speaker 1

39:42 : 41:06

Hello.

Jamie, I think I lost the last two seconds of that.

I'm so sorry. But whatever your wife is doing, that's a cardinal sin.

Thank you ever so much for joining me, Jamie, Emily and Luke.

Definitely food for thought there and there's lots to consider when it comes to food waste, either as a business or as a resident.

Thank you to everybody who's watched today's Ask the Expert.

I hope you've been able to put up with some of the issues we've had. I apologise for those.

I trust you found the conversation informative and helpful.

Who knew there is so much to talk about and so many experts to talk to when it comes to

food waste. 

This is a wrap for 2023. I hope you've enjoyed this year's series of Ask the Expert.

We're going to be back again in 2024 with new guests, fresh conversations and who knows

maybe even a new host.

So make sure you listening. As always, I want to thank Lauren Burgess and Rachel Hunt for their support in making these things come to life. Please don't forget to follow us and look back out for notifications for when we go live.

You can watch and listen back to all of our previous episodes of Ask the Expert at Veolia dot co dot uk forward slash podcast, hyphen hub.

From me, you all have a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year.

Thank you Goodbye