As we head towards Christmas, I’m sure you’ll agree that the coming weeks can be expensive ones as we start to buy gifts and make plans for the festive season. So any suggestions on how we can save money in these difficult economic times are bound to be welcome.

That’s why I’m delighted to be able to tell you about today’s launch of Free Lunching – the latest campaign from our Love Food Hate Waste team to help us make the most of the food we buy and reduce what we throw away.

At a time when we’re all looking more carefully at our budgets, using leftovers or making the most of food we have at home can save us a lot of money, especially as the credit crunch continues to bite.

With the average shop-bought lunch costing around £3.33, using up what is already in the fridge is easy to do and makes economic sense. It’s really easy to get creative with your leftovers (the fridges at WRAP’s offices often contain a variety of tasty and imaginative examples) and there are also lots of delicious ideas for creating speedy meal solutions on the Love Food Hate Waste site. You’ll soon see the savings mount up.

And of course at the heart of this campaign is the sad fact that throwing away so much food unnecessarily is bad news for the environment. We currently throw away a third of the food we buy. Every tonne of that food waste we can reduce will save four and a half tones of carbon dioxide equivalent. That is something worth going for.

So why not take a look at the ideas on our LFHW website and discover that there really can be such a thing as ‘free lunch’ when you take your food to work.