WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) campaign provides useful reference and communications material that local authorities can draw on to promote food reduction in their area.
LFHW has its own dedicated consumer facing website containing a wealth of detailed ideas to help individuals, communities and organisations reduce food waste as well as the LFHW partner website containing free materials, templates, and resources for local authorities.
The Waste Prevention Hub provides an overview of a selection of that guidance. For the full details please visit the LFHW page or the dedicated the LFHW consumer website.
Key points
- LFHW aims to raise awareness of the issue and offer practical advice and solutions to help the public reduce their food waste.
- Wasting less food will ultimately benefit people’s purses and the environment too.
- The campaign involves a wide range of partners, from community organisations, chefs, UK businesses, trade bodies and local authorities through to individuals.
- LFHW focuses on five key overarching behaviours: planning, portions, date labels, leftovers and forgotten foods and storage.
Consumer-facing website content for local authority officers
The LFHW website (http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com) comprises seven main sections:
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In these sections, the LFHW website gives practical advice for consumers to reduce food waste at home. LFHW also has an app so residents have up-to-date advice on food waste prevention at their fingertips at all times.
In particular there are two guides contained within the website:
- Making the most of the food we buy - Bringing Love Food Hate Waste to life in the community: activities and ideas are designed to be used in a range of different settings such as coffee mornings, group meetings, local workplaces, and one off gatherings; and
- Love Food Hate Waste - Save More pack: developed to help the passing on of a very important message: how to save money by reducing food waste.
Communications content for local authority Officers
In October 2022 a new toolkit for Local Authorities was launched to support you with your citizen facing communications about food waste prevention. The toolkit includes assets you can download and use to run your own 'Make your food go further' campaign.
In addition, a wealth of free communications materials are available for local authorities to use including:
- Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) brand guidelines
- A guide to running a LFHW day or week
- An introduction to Love Food Hate Waste
- Consumer behaviours research (updated annually)
- Free communication templates including posters, leaflets, livery, photos, recipe cards and much, much more
How LFHW is promoted in a community will depend on the intended audience, local demographics and the time and resources available. WRAP has carried out extensive research into why people waste food and the results can be found in the People Report. All of WRAPs research on household food waste can be found in this easy to use resource listing.
Potential LFHW food waste reduction ideas
Some ideas include:
- Run a Love Food Hate Waste day or week: Running a LFHW week/day has benefits for you, your colleagues and your residents. By learning new hints and tips everyone will be able to make the most of the food that they buy, reduce the amount they waste, and save money! Our guide shows you how to do it for free and it needn’t take up too much time. It provides readymade resources, ideas and advice and all it takes are a few keen volunteers to get it up and running and to engage their colleagues, residents and community.
- Newsletters: If your organisation has a regular newsletter (this could include on-line or e-mail), include a tip or recipe or theme from the campaign calendar from lovefoodhatewaste.com as a regular feature, then ask for members of your community to submit their own.
- Encourage community groups and residents to download and use the free Save More pack. You can use this pack with family and friends, in your community or household. It is free to use and can be downloaded and used by anyone. You don’t need to be an expert in food or cooking to do it. You just need to be keen to reduce your food waste, and to help others to do the same.
- Leftover lunch: Leftover lunch events are when a group meets at lunchtime to compare leftovers and forgotten foods. This provides a great talking point to get a discussion about food waste started and you can use the Save More activities to help.
- Guest speakers: Arrange for a guest speaker from your local community to talk to your group. Choose someone who has a knowledge of food, who can share tips and recipes and give advice. A member of the Women's Institute, someone from a local business such as a chef or a green grocer, or a cookery teacher at a local school would be ideal. If you have expertise yourself, spread the word of LFHW by offering to be guest speaker at another group in your community.
- Local events: Ask a local community group to hold a stall at a local event, you don’t have to sell anything, just talk to people about LFHW. Share recipe ideas and top tips and ask for some in return. Use props such as kitchen scales, spaghetti measurers, recipes books and shopping lists to get the conversation going. Cooking and eating food is common to everyone, so it’ll be no surprise how receptive everyone will be. You can download free communications templates from the LFHW partners site.