This tutti frutti sorbet of anything you fancy will make your fruit bowl go further

We fill our fruit bowl on market day each week, and if any of it ripens too quickly, we simply cut it up and freeze it to give us a good pudding base on hand at all times. It’s best to lay the pieces of fruit flat on trays with space between them, so they don’t freeze into one solid block. Our daughter has a small bowl of frozen fruit for pudding most evenings, but when we’re feeling fancy, we blend it up into today’s soft-serve-like sorbet and top it with grated chocolate, coconut, seeds and/or nut butters. It’s best eaten immediately, or at least within a few hours of making, but it will keep in the freezer for up to six months. If it becomes hard and icy, cut it up, blend again until smooth, and freeze in an ice-cube tray for ease of use.

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FTSE 100 firm DS Smith, which works with firms over alternatives, urges next government to match global standards

Whoever wins the UK general election must tighten regulations to reduce the use of plastic packaging, match global standards and drive “green consumption”, the boss of one of the sector’s biggest manufacturers has urged.

Miles Roberts, the chief executive of the packaging firm DS Smith, made the call to the next government as the company celebrated passing its target to replace more than 1bn pieces of plastic 16 months early.

Our survey shows that buying ingredients separately for the meal kits offered by the leading suppliers can save up to 74%,

Consumers who subscribe to “recipe box” delivery services can save up to 74% of the cost of the meals by buying the ingredients separately in the supermarket, research by the Observer has found.

Analysis of the contents and prices of some of the most popular meal kits shows that buying the individual ingredients is far cheaper – even if you have to get whole bottles of sauce or packets of rice.

Studies find red, blue and green plastic decomposes into microplastic particles faster than plainer colours

Retailers are being urged to stop making everyday products such as drinks bottles, outdoor furniture and toys out of brightly coloured plastic after researchers found it degrades into microplastics faster than plainer colours.

Red, blue and green plastic became “very brittle and fragmented”, while black, white and silver samples were “largely unaffected” over a three-year period, according to the findings of the University of Leicester-led project.

What to do with a leftover barbecued sausage? Add broccoli and beans for a quick and easy midweek meal

Just one cooked sausage, left over from a barbecue, or indeed any meal, is enough to make this simple one-pot wonder inspired by the Italian classic orecchiette con salsiccia e cime di rapa. In the original, raw sausage is skinned, broken into pieces and fried with cime di rapa (turnip tops), then tossed with cooked orecchiette. Being a bean fiend, however, I’ve come up with an even speedier version using creamy butter beans instead of pasta. Turnips are mostly grown for their flavoursome green tops in Italy, rather than their crisp roots as in northern Europe, so if you’re lucky enough to find a bunch of cime di rapa or some turnips with their tops, use those here; otherwise, just about any combination of leafy green and/or brassica will do.

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England’s chief medical officer says 19th-century wastewater system ended cholera outbreaks and calls for similar focus now

Public health must be central to future investment in a new wastewater system to protect people from waterborne diseases, the chief medical officer for England, Prof Chris Whitty, has said.

Reducing people’s risk of coming into contact with human faecal pathogens in untreated and treated sewage discharged into rivers and coastal waters must be a priority, a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering said.