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Cooking a potluck lunch at work can help avoid food wastage and foster office team bonding

By Amanda Hoh
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Cooking leftovers at work
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What could you do with a quarter of a pumpkin, a leftover piece of fish and a few pineapple slices?

Don't let it go to waste! Take it to work, get your workmates to do the same and cook it up in a pot-luck lunchtime feast.

That's the concept behind the Cookluck Club.

It's a new initiative by Youth Food Movement Australia which encourages workplaces to pool their leftovers to avoid food wastage and promote team bonding by cooking in the work kitchen.

Sardines, half an avocado and other vegetables on a table
Get your workmates to bring in their leftover food from home.(ABC Radio Sydney: Amanda Hoh)

The Sydney arm of the volunteer organisation do this every day and members take turns creating interesting recipes.

"You end up saving so much food from being wasted because you use all those random bits that you don't know what to do with," communications manager Zo Zhou said.

"Combined with all your friends' bits and pieces, you can make something pretty spectacular.

"It saves things from going in the bin."

The team supplements its leftovers by having a food box delivered each week with fresh fruits and vegetables.

For one lunch, Ms Zhou used pineapple, beetroot, baby spinach, cucumber and cabbage to make a salad, while someone's small piece of fish, pumpkin, carrot and leftover soup was turned into a stir-fry.

Grated potato was made into a delicious crispy potato rosti with the office sandwich press.

"Workplaces need to be open to letting their employees do this," Ms Zhou said.

"If it starts to take off, maybe it is worth investing in something like an electric wok because it ends up being this centre of lunch."

Youth Food Movement Australia team eating lunch
The Youth Food Movement team cooks and eats lunch together almost every day.(ABC Radio Sydney.)

Over-catering creates waste

One of the biggest areas of food waste in the workplace is over-catering, Ms Zhou said.

"People are always worried about under-catering than over-catering.

"Rarely do workplaces take that food and give it to an organisation like Oz Harvest or people who need it.

"The solution to that is provide containers and people can take stuff home."

Cooking with an electric wok
An electric wok is a useful kitchen tool to create quick lunches in the office.(ABC Radio Sydney: Amanda Hoh)

Australians throw out about $8 billion worth of food every year, according to data from the NSW Government.

For each person, that's around 20 per cent of their purchased food or the equivalent of about $1,000 a year.

Some of the reasons for that wastage include not knowing what to do with leftovers, cooking too much, buying takeaway, and not checking the pantry before a trip to the supermarket.

"There's a lot of focus on the problems and stuff like, 'just eat your leftovers people', but how can we make it rewarding and fun for people?" Ms Zhou said.

"Rather than starting with telling people what they should do, we thought of an activity that people want to do already [like cooking with their friends] and built food saving into that."

Posted , updated