Throwing away our cash

According to the government quango WRAP we Brits throw away a third of all the food we buy. They estimate that the nation drops 5 million untouched potatoes into the bin every day, along with over 4 million apples and 700,000 sausages. This waste is costing the average household £420 a year (£610 if you have kids) which is a shocking way to be spending our hard earned cash in the current economic climate. It'll cost us the planet too as all this organic waste turns into climate-damaging methane in our poorly ventilated landfill sites. So it's time for us all to start checking use-by dates and getting creative with leftovers.

Milk in a bag!

Sainsbury's have just taken the bold step of testing whether it can sell us milk in plastic bags instead of bottles. The idea is that you buy one of their special milk jugs that fits in the door of your fridge, and then fill it up with these bags. I'm instinctively nervous about hauling around little plastic sacks full of milk in my shopping bag but I'm sure they have given them a thorough road test. In which case: what great news! Those two litre milk bottles are the thing I feel guiltiest about throwing away (our local authority is being a little slow getting around to recycling plastics) so I shall be embracing this new idea with enthusiasm.