Waste Less this Pancake Day

Pancake day is traditionally the last day of feasting before Lent begins, where all our leftover rich and indulgent foods are used up to create pancakes. As tasty as this is, the underlying message behind Shrove Tuesday is one of our core focuses here at Paper Round, waste reduction.

Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, according to Recycle for Northamptonshire, even the ingredients used to make pancakes are heavily wasted. As a nation we currently throw away 660,000 eggs and 360 million litres of milk every year, which results in a total of four million pancakes!
 
Here’s a few tips to ensure your waste reduction is kept to a minimum this Pancake Day.

Rather than putting these into your food caddy, egg shells quickly decompose in compost and add calcium and other valuable minerals to the soil. They can also be crushed and scattered around your plants and flowers to help deter plant-eating slugs and snails without have to use eco-unfriendly pesticides.

If you over estimated how much milk you would need and the carton is now past it’s expiry date, it can still be used for many things for a few days. Sour milk can be used for things such as scrambled eggs, milkshakes and baking and you won’t be able to taste the difference. You can even make a sour milk face mask which can benefit your skin. You can also freeze milk within its expiry date if you realise you have too much.

If you have bananas left over from Pancake day which are now too ripe to eat as they are, there’s no need to throw them away. Over ripe bananas can be cooked and can also be used to make banana bread or banana smoothies. Click here for more ideas (Opens in a new tab).

If you’ve made too many pancakes, instead of creating unnecessary waste you can save them for another day. Freeze them separately to ensure they don’t stick to each other by placing a baking sheet between each pancake.
 
Why only aim to waste less on Pancake Day? Websites such as Love Food Hate Waste will inspire you to reduce your food waste all year round.