BBC One’s Ready Steady Cook with Rylan Clark-Neal returns in the New Year with a promise to be one of the most sustainable food shows on TV.

This will be done in a number of ways both on and off screen - most notably to viewers those famous red tomato and green peppers plastic bags will be a thing of the past.

To ensure Ready Steady Cook raises the standard in sustainability, the production has pledged to:

Replace plastic bags with re-usable jute totes

Present ingredients on screen in a responsible way, avoiding single use plastic with glass jars and bottles being favoured over plastic alternatives

Use separate colour coded waste bins both on set and backstage, which will be collected by a local recycling firm for anaerobic digestion (where waste is broken down to produce biogas and biofertiliser)

Donate unused fruit/vegetables and non-perishable items to a local food bank

Source ingredients from local suppliers as much as possible favouring Fair Trade items over others

Favour seasonal products to avoid excessive food miles
More generally the show will reflect contemporary food themes, from cooking on budget to eating healthily, managing food waste to feeding the whole family, mirroring the changes in food and British cooking over the past decade.

Rylan Clark-Neal says: “One of the biggest sustainability issues we face is from food and packaging waste, so Ready Steady Cook is being brought bang up to date to play its part in tackling this. It’s going to be goodbye plastic bags and hello jute totes when we hit screens in the New Year. I can’t wait to get stuck in!”

Cat Lawson, Executive Producer, Remarkable TV says: “The world has changed a lot since Ready Steady Cook was on air last, and it’s more important than ever to source sustainable and ethically produced food. As such Ready Steady Cook will be favouring local suppliers and seasonal products, avoiding single use plastic and food waste as much as possible.”

About the new series of Ready Steady Cook

Ready Steady Cook, produced by Remarkable TV (part of EndemolShine UK), will feature a diverse range of exciting talent from the culinary world, offering the new line-up of chefs a platform to showcase their cookery prowess against the clock on BBC One. Chefs include Mike Reid, Romy Gill, Akis Petretzikis, Ellis Barrie and Anna Haugh.

In every episode two contestants are each paired up with a chef, going head to head in the newly designed Ready Steady Cook kitchen. But in this new series, the chefs will now face two different taste tests and the clock is always ticking!

In the first challenge, each contestant comes armed with their bag of ingredients, all bought within a £10 budget. They’ll have just 20 minutes to create delicious, surprising and inspiring dishes ready to wow the discerning studio audience.

And with further format twists along the way including wildcard ingredients Rylan always has a surprise in store. The revamped second challenge is even faster, as each pair has just 10 minutes to create yet more amazing dishes, this time based on audience ingredients cards.

With unlikely combinations always a possibility, the pressure is on to create yet more flavour sensations. And, in true Ready Steady tradition, the casting vote on the show’s winner will be left to the audience who’ll have their say on the best dishes, by voting with the iconic red tomato and green pepper voting cards.