Meal planning - Reducing food waste in Camden and Dorset

Exploring how meal-planning can be a catalyst for food waste reduction, across Camden and Dorset.

Overview & Objective 

UK households waste around 4.6 million tonnes of edible food each year. This represents a significant waste of resources, including the water and carbon involved in food production and transportation, as well as the time and effort expended growing and producing food that ends up in our bins. 

At Keep Britain Tidy, our research has taught us that people would like to reduce the amount of food they throw away, but want help and support in doing so. Meal planning is a well-known tool, so we wanted to see just how effective it can be in reducing food waste.  

 

Approach

Working with our two partnering local authorities Dorset Council and the London Borough of Camden, Keep Britain Tidy’s Centre for Social Innovation first carried out research with residents, resulting in insights that were used to design a new intervention encouraging households to take up a four-week meal planning challenge.  

The intervention reached over 2,500 households in our pilot locations, whereby booklets were delivered through letterboxes in participating areas, inviting residents to take part in the challenge. The booklets contained resources and guidance to get them started, alongside any tools they may need, followed by a reminder after two weeks to nudge them along their meal planning journey.  

 

Outcome

• Food waste collected from Camden’s participating households reduced by 2% after residents received their meal planning booklets, comparing this to a nearby control area, where residents’ food waste jumped up by 22% during this time. 

• In Dorset’s participating households, food waste reduced by 6% following the intervention. However, in this control area it reduced by 37%. This suggests that the reduction could have been due to external factors. 

• Overall, the total weight of waste recorded by our panel of households reduced by 11%. 

 

Quotes

“It really just reinforced what I had already started doing and gave me a push in the right direction” 

 

“It is a really good idea. I wonder if it would be better to get a resident involved. Most communities have Facebook pages so maybe it could go through the community.” 

 

“I think it's aimed more at younger people and families. I'm old school so my generation has been brought up with doing this anyway.” 

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