NORTH Ayrshire families are being urged to enjoy a ‘zero waste’ Halloween this year – and cook their pumpkins.

Around 100,000 pumpkins will be bought by Scots this Hallowe’en, yet a staggering 99 per cent of them are used purely for making lanterns.

The Love Food Hate Waste campaign, delivered in Scotland by Zero Waste Scotland, is calling on North Ayrshire families to get creative with all the food currently going in the bin, by providing a range of pumpkin recipes to inspire people to make the most of this seasonal squash.

Food waste is a major issue, with over 380,000 tonnes of food being thrown away in Scottish households each year that could have been avoided and the average family in North Ayrshire could save over £470 a year by cutting food waste.

The American tradition of pumpkin carving is growing increasingly popular in Scotland, and 90 per cent of pumpkin sales in Scotland happen around Hallowe’en.

Pumpkins are rich in vitamins and minerals and are a great food source, but almost all of the ones bought for Hallowe’en end up uneaten.

To help cut down this waste, Love Food Hate Waste has some delicious pumpkin recipe suggestions to try including roast pumpkin lasagne, pumpkin tart, roast pumpkin and coriander soup, roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin chutney.

All of these recipes are available on lovefoodhatewaste.com, along with lots of other great tips focusing on apples, which are in season and often used in Halloween parties for apple bobbing. Recipes include toffee apples, apple crisps and apple spiced muffins.

Zero Waste Scotland’s Ylva Haglund, co-ordinator of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign said: “Hallowe’en is a really fun time of year where people traditionally get together, so it makes sense to make the most of the food we buy for these celebrations.

“If you’re having a Hallowe’en party then making a delicious warming pumpkin soup or a hearty pumpkin lasagne is a great way to make food that is festive, feeds plenty of people and also leaves you with a pumpkin to carve into a lantern.

“Throwing away the actual food inside the pumpkin is a real waste of the money you’ve spent when there are so many great things you can make with it, and sending this food to landfill is also really damaging to the environment.” The Love Food Hate Waste website contains all of the Hallowe’en themed recipes, along with hundreds of other recipes aimed at using up leftovers and tips on how to reduce food waste.

The main reasons food ends up in the bin is because we buy too much, cook too much or don’t store food correctly, and often don’t think to get creative with leftovers and freeze things.

The website has a wealth of tips on how plan meals to make the most of everything you buy, how to judge portions correctly, how to store food to make it last longer and ways to turn leftovers into amazing extra meals and snacks.

Go to www.lovefoodhatewaste.com to find out more.