Wicklow Co Council’s Environmental Awareness Office are looking for 10 to 12 families from the Roundwood area to take on this challenge! If you are up for it please email info@roundwood.ie. If we get enough volunteer households we’ll give it a go & we might save yourselves a few bob!

The EPA funded Stop Food Waste Campaign have developed a four part programme which they call the Stop Food Waste Challenge to address the issue of food waste in Irish households. The challenge was tested in two towns over the last year and well received by participants and is now being rolled out nationwide. The challenge involves ten to twelve families meeting together over a series of four meeting to look at food waste, measure how much their families are producing and take steps to reduce the amount of food waste. Each meeting should be no longer than 40 minutes to an hour.  The four meeting cover the following themes.

Week 1: Getting to know your food waste which looks at how much food waste we produce, how much it costs and the environmental impacts of food waste.

Week 2: Planning meals and shopping addressing how good planning and shop can prevent excessive purchasing of food by planning ahead.

Week 3: Storage, Serving and Reuse look at how storage of food can help to prevent waste, measuring how much we serve prevents leftover and how we can reuse leftovers in the preparation of other dishes.

Week 4: An overall assessment by the group with the sharing of information on what worked well for participants. Home composting is an option for this meeting also.