Eco living: how to save food and reduce waste "For anyone counting the pennies, it's really important not to let anything go to waste," says Helen. Soups are a quick and easy way to use up leftover vegetables, as is bubble and squeak, which was one of my childhood favourites. For a fancy twist on things, make bubble-and-squeak patties and serve with chutney. We also like frittatas, prepared with local eggs and whatever we have lying around: onions, peppers, mushrooms, courgettes, bacon, Stilton - pretty much anything savoury will do. Cauliflower leaves make a delicate soup with a sprinkle of orange zest and a little finely grated pecorino cheese. Broccoli stalks, cauliflower leaves and leftover scraps of Christmas stilton make a great soup," she says. My favourite leftover recipe is for fried boiled potatoes. They can be sliced and very gently fried in olive oil with saffron for about an hour and are quite delicious with cold leftover roast chicken or beef. Stale bread can be dried and made into breadcrumbs that keep for months in an airtight jar. These provide a good crunchy topping to things like cauliflower cheese and baked fish pies. Another benefit of using every scrap of food is less unnecessary cardboard, plastic and polystyrene packaging supermarkets seem to love so much. Indeed, while householders have made sharp reductions in the amount of food they throw away, supermarkets have only managed to reduce packaging waste by 0.4 per cent, or 10,000 tons, since they made a pledge in 2010 to reduce it by five per cent. One way of avoiding the added cost and inconvenience of packaging waste is to shop at greengrocers" or farmers" markets where paper bags are still the order of the day. Another idea would be to adopt the Scandinavian approach to cans and bottles, which is to reintroduce a deposit system. Tens of thousands of people in their forties and over will remember getting a portion of their pocket money from returning used glass drinks bottles. In Norway, where the scheme operates at most supermarkets, customers get up to 25p a bottle, and 93 per cent of all drinks bottles sold are returned to the system. But British retailers and the bottling industry are opposed to the idea, fearing extra costs, despite evidence that such a system could be self-financing. Finally, that old bugbear of the plastic bag, which we thought was on its way out, is still hanging around, getting swept into the sea, decorating urban trees and killing wildlife. Despite a hugely successful first year in Wales of a 5p charge on all plastic bags, leading to a 96 per cent drop in use, and the imminent introduction of a similar scheme in Northern Ireland, England continues to drag its feet, using more than eight billion plastic bags last year. "Vested interests like the plastics industry, and concerns from the Treasury that consumers won't like it, mean we're still a long way from a scheme that, when introduced elsewhere, had an instant and dramatic effect on plastic bag use," says Jack Neill-Hall of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which is trying to persuade the Government to adopt a plastic bag charging scheme. I think the Treasury underestimates us and most people would adapt to reusing bags - a scheme that works successfully in some shops - pretty quickly. Give it a go, George. cottagesmallholder.com/best-recipes-for-leftovers; cambridgecarbonfootprint.org/eating-well-on-a-budget Join the plastic bag use campaign at cpre.org.uk/how-you-can-help/take-action/litter