Bread crusts — to bin or not to bin — that is the question

I am guilty, guilty, guilty when it comes to binning bread crusts. It’s not that I can’t see how to make them delicious, homemade buttery garlic croutons, anyone? It’s just that I’m plain lazy when it comes to using them. As a busy working parent, I just don’t always have time to be creative about what to do with my food waste. I’m very good with reusing leftover roast chicken, quesadillas, soup, risotto — yum. Bread on the other hand, is just — meh — does it really matter if I bin the ends?

It’s only when my eight-year-old son started a food waste topic at school, did he point out how much bread we waste as a family. “Don’t throw away the bread,” he says to me as I’m emptying out the cupboard for bin day collection. “At school, Miss said that we throw away more bread than any other food.”

And he’s right, because according to the North London Waste Authority, 1.2bn bread crusts in the UK are thrown away each year with one in five of us admitting that we bin the ends. That amounts to over 50m edible loaves of bread ending up in landfill each year.

So what should I do about our bread waste? I decide to make it HIS job to think about ways to repurpose our bread ends. I think it’s really important that he owns this topic. If he’s invested, I know he’ll take it seriously.