Each week in October, our hand picked, food loving pro chefs will share 3 of their own delicious zero waste recipes to help us all stop food waste in the kitchen!

For the entire month of October - Simon Toohey (Masterchef AU), Dwayne and Amelia from Mirritya Mundya, Anne-Marie Bonneau (@ZeroWasteChef), Scott Gooding (author and founder of The Good Feed and The Good Stock) and Anthea Cheng (@rainbownourishments) will show us all how to cook delicious dishes without food waste!

Food Waste Free October is a challenge for us all to eliminate food waste from our households.

5 October - 31 October 2020

Are you up for the challenge?

If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world.

We all have a part to play in this - 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2e greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere every year as a result of food being wasted globally. On average, an Australian household wastes one in five grocery bags of food and in the UK households waste 4.5 million tonnes of food each year. So this issue isn’t just costing the planet, it’s costing us too!

Our group of extraordinary chefs - zero waste pros in their own right- are going to show us how to cut down our food waste when we cook by making meal plans and shopping lists that use up all of what you buy (yep, that includes broccoli stalks, zucchini ends, and potato peels!) all while getting us to make really delicious, exciting dishes while we’re at it.

Meet the talented chefs!

Anthea Cheng (@rainbownourishments) is an author, vegan blogger, food photographer and, well, recovering from owning a cake/catering business where she used to make cakes for people all around Canberra. She shares wholesome recipes online and has a huge sweet tooth, especially for (vegan) ice cream. Anthea also loves hanging in nature and playing with babies… even though she has none of her own, yet.

Scott Gooding (@thegoodplaceaus) is all about cooking locally grown food that's good for us. You might know him from My Kitchen Rules, or you might have read one of the nine health books he's written. Scott is also the culinary director of The Good Place restaurants, Co-Founder of The Good Feed and The Good Stock and is the founder of Reconditioned me, and 8-week online holistic health program.

Anne-Marie Bonneau (@ZeroWasteChef) is the author of the Zero Waste Chef blog. She has been plastic free since 2011, where her zero waste journey started. Anne Marie is a master of doing the basics from scratch (check out her sourdough and tofu recipes), and using up all the leftovers and bi-products that come up along the way. Her debut book will be published in April 2021 by Penguin US and Canada. [Image credit: Daniela Roberts]

Simon Toohey barely needs an introduction - he’s come fresh off the back of Masterchef Back to Win, after being runner up in Masterchef 2019. He's proven himself to be a wizard with vegetables. Along with cooking plant-based food, Simon is also working to show the world how to cook food waste free, through his organisation, the Sustainable Earth Network (@sustainableearthnetwork). He’s also started a youtube channel showing everyday people how to cook your average veggie in all kinds of exciting ways!

Dwayne and Amelia Bannon Harrison are the team behind Mirritya Mundya (@mmundya) - meaning hungry blackfish in the Ngarrugu language group of South Eastern Australia. They give their food an ‘Indigenous twist’, cooking with native ingredients and infusing them with other cuisines! But there's more to it than just the flavours - Dwayne and Amelia prepare dishes with a care for country entrenched in their minds.

Sign up now to be a part of it! We're all in it together!

A million thanks to Love Food Hate Waste NSW for helping us make Food Waste Free October happen. We can't thank them enough for supporting 1 Million Women year after year and for their passionate committment to reducing household food waste.

Why this challenge is so important

When we waste food, we also waste everything that's gone into producing it and getting it to us - land, water, energy, nutrients, packaging and more.

Currently, many of the ways we farm in order to mass produce food are damaging for the land, and means our food contains less nutrients. And so many people still aren’t fed. We need to change the way we farm and how we consume. Part of creating a better, regenerative world is being more mindful of the food we are consuming, and making sure we eat everything we buy in order to consume less.

Cutting down our food waste is one of the best ways we can save - save energy, eliminate waste and carbon emissions, and save money while we're doing it!

Learn how to cut waste with professional chefs!

Sign up now for Food Waste Free October and join in cooking some creative, low waste recipes (that are a little bit fancy) over four weeks in October.

Sign up for the challenge!