10 Best Zero-Waste Cookbooks UK 2023 | Melissa Hemsley, Max La Manna and More

Although they're packed full of veggies, Melissa describes her recipes as flexitarian, meaning each one can be adapted to suit any diet. Helpful suggestions are even included within the book for swapping out ingredients such as meat, dairy and fish.

Every recipe is crafted with the aim of creating simple food that is healthy and incredibly tasty, with a particular focus on using UK-grown, easy to buy ingredients that cut down on food waste. It's simply a great cookbook across the board that we feel ought to be in everyone's home, and that's why it's our number 1 pick!

Designed with practicality in mind, this book offers a series of 'shopping lists' for foods to cover you for a week. Not only will it save you the headache of having to decide what meals you'd like to prepare each week, these recipes are tasty, healthy, and designed to produce as little waste as possible.

If concerned that a prescribed list of meals will soon get tiresome, don't fear! This book actually contains multiple lists, each centring around a specific theme, such as 'round the world' or 'relaxed'. It aims to reduce stress, encourage you to eat healthy, and reduce your waste output, which is more than worthy of praise.

Through his tireless advocating for waste reduction, low waste chef and climate activist Max La Manna has inspired thousands of people around the world to alter their consumption habits and get creative with their leftovers. In fact, you may already have seen one his viral recipe videos or some of his work with BBC Earth.

Max's philosophy holds that more plants = less waste, which is why this book features 80 tasty, plant-based recipes that will help you save money and the planet. There's even some home hacks and a 21-day zero-waste challenge thrown in for good measure, making this book one of the best ways of getting started on your sustainability journey.

Have you ever finished cooking a dish and noticed how much waste is generated just from peelings and offcuts alone? Far from being destined for the rubbish pile, we'll bet you didn't know that many of these off-casts can actually be used to make delicious meals and other foods.

From using apple cores to make syrup, to creating butter with mushroom stems, this book is full of inspired recipes that you didn't even know were possible. In a world where even our peels, stems and tops can be used to great effect, there's really no reason why each and every one of us can't make the move towards a zero-waste kitchen.

In Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet, Award-winning chef, writer and food waste campaigner, Tom Hunt advocates a 'Root to Fruit' philosophy. By giving us the skills and knowledge to shop, eat, and cook sustainably, his aim is to show us how we can all do our bit to help the environment at no extra cost!

This is not a po-faced manifesto. Tom's book is full of recipes that are designed to be vibrant, celebratory and pleasurable, as well as being sustainable. From morning meals to sweet treats, you'll never be stuck for delicious recipes that come from sustainable and reliable sources.

Anne-Marie Bonneau has lived and blogged for a decade under the moniker of the 'Zero-Waste Chef'. Despite her title, Bonneau advocates less for absolute waste disposal, instead encouraging  everyone to try to be a little bit better. As she says, everybody reducing their waste output by 20% would have a huge impact on the planet.

And that's exactly the premise of this book - small but significant improvements that will make difference over time. Containing 75 vegan and vegetarian recipes for using up leftover food waste, this book shows us that a zero-waste kitchen is completely attainable.

So, you want to do something to help the planet, but are lacking cooking expertise? Let this cookbook from DK help you on your journey. Inside, you'll find a comprehensive guide to zero-waste living that's packed with easy recipes and tons of ideas to live more sustainably.

Centring around the three 'Rs': reduce, reuse and recycle, you'll get quick tips and simple solutions on everything from growing your own herbs and veg, to turning food waste into delicious meals. Did you know beetroot peels can be used to make a delicious falafel? If this is the start of your sustainability journey, then it's the perfect book for you.

There's nothing worse than gazing into your cupboard at an ingredient that went out of date before you even got a chance to use it. We throw an appalling 60 million tonnes of food away each year, but fortunately, a solution has arrived in the form of this cookbook!

It's full of tips on how to make use of pretty much every bit of potential food waste - from making vegetable stock from corn husks, to using lemon zest to infuse vodka. It's a little bit short on additional information, but otherwise, this is a sure-fire way to ensure that everything you buy gets used.

Modern day stresses have lead us to see cooking as a bit of a chore, but food can be a great way of connecting with our planet. As this book reveals, making the shifts towards sustainable cooking doesn't have to be too difficult!

Created by a dietitian and a designer, Sustainable Kitchen is full of recipes that encourage planet-conscious eating. Whether it's Thai salad or muffins, each meal is designed with the aim of decreasing food waste and cooking using local, seasonally available foods. All in all, it's a heartfelt, holistic method of using food to nourish ourselves and our planet.

The Zero Waste Blueprint is written by Douglas McMaster, founder of SILO, the first zero food-waste restaurant. Perhaps one that could be considered a polemic, this book maps out a possible future - or as McMaster sees it, our necessary future - when it comes to the way we source and use our food.

You won't find the usual buzzwords here, and there's no mention of the words 'sustainability' or 'organic'. Instead, you'll find terms such as 'closed-loop systems' and 'off-grid ingredients'. This is the real deal, penned by a chef who foresees a world in which we eat fresh, waste less, and make the most of what nature gives us.