Coronation Street Parties

With the forthcoming Coronation of King Charles only a few weeks away , Recycle Now and Love Food Hate Waste, part of climate action NGO WRAP, have produced tips worthy of a royal celebration to ensure any street party or gathering to celebrate this historic event is as waste-free as possible.

If you’re planning a large gathering with friends and family, or a street party with your neighbours, we want to help the UK recycles and avoid food waste.

Love Food Hate Waste have published tips to make sure you have a memorable celebration, that is also kind to our planet. Details can be found here: Coronation celebrations: how to avoid food waste when catering for big groups | Love Food Hate Waste

Food: -

• Every family brings a dish – this should mean that every family brings enough to feed themselves, even though people can tuck into each other’s. This can help to avoid having too much left over at the end, that might go to waste.
• Go buffet-style – letting people help themselves from central serving dishes will allow people to take however much they can eat. This also makes it easier to use up anything that’s left behind. 
• Allocate specific foods/dishes to specific people – this allows a birds-eye view that what is being made will be suitable for leftovers/freezing, as well as avoiding lots of people bringing sausage rolls and nobody bringing cake! 
• Everyone takes home leftovers – which you can use to make your very own Coronation quiche.
• Serve things up you can freeze later - make sure nothing goes to waste by choosing dishes which can be enjoyed as leftovers, whether that’s for lunch or dinner the next day, or that can be frozen for the weeks or months ahead.  
• Food waste: Each year in the UK, 4.5 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten goes to waste from our homes over the twelve months. So, if you are planning a Coronation street party don’t forget about your freezer! Utilising your freezer acts like a pause button, giving you more time to eat it and saving it from the bin. Not only does it lock in freshness and preserve quality and flavour, but it’s also perfectly safe providing it’s defrosted correctly. Your food won’t deteriorate in the freezer, and most bacteria can’t grow in it, so it’s a great way to buy yourself extra time and save delicious food for later!

Love Food Hate Waste has some excellent tips on the best ways to prevent food waste.

 Foods and recipes | Love Food Hate Waste

Recycling: -

• Switch from using disposable plates and cups and plastic cutlery to real ones (or at least reusable) glasses, crockery and cutlery.
• Beer and wine bottles, cans and plastic drinks bottles can all be gathered up and usually recycled in your normal recycling bin (check our Recycling Locator to find out whether this applies to your area or take them to a bottle bank if not).
• You can swap plastic straws for paper ones
• Don’t forget you can recycle plastic bags and wrapping – There are over 6,000 supermarkets across the UK that you can now take this type of plastic to for recycling, check the  Recycling Locator to find your nearest store.

Useful links:

• What do all the SYMBOLS on your packaging actually mean – and which ones should you take heed of? https://www.recyclenow.com/how-to-recycle/understanding-recycling-symbols
• Recycle Now definitive list of our A-Z of what can/can’t be recycled: https://www.recyclenow.com/recycle-an-item the postcode locator (on the Recycle Now homepage) can also tell you what each local authority does with any of those items, from London to Llanfairfechan.
• Freezer guidance: Seven foods you never knew you could freeze | Love Food Hate Waste