4 tips to combat food waste at home

Save your food, wallet and the planet

Simple changes that make a difference

〰️ This year I’ve been really conscious of our food waste at home. Food waste is one of those things that seem little and but when you add it up it’s actually a huge problem that we don’t really recognise as we can see it.

Aussies throw away 345 kg of food per household, 38% of the average NSW household rubbish bin. That’s equivalent to 1 in 5 shopping bags, $3800 worth of groceries.

If food waste was a country, it would be the 3rd biggest greenhouse gas emitter after the US & China!

So besides being wasteful and costly, why is food waste so bad?

As food breaks down in landfill it produces methane, a greenhouse gas emitter. Methane is 25 x more potent than carbon dioxide. A whole bunch of resources including water, transport and refrigeration were also wasted in bringing food onto your plate that goes uneaten. Good news is, we can all do something about it.

What I’ve implemented to reduce our food waste:

➰ Use crispers for fruit and veg. Crispers are literally just a sealed container and we just bought some large ones from the supermarket (swipe to see). Honestly, they make a HUGE difference! Veggies and herbs last WEEKS in them. It’s so simple I’m still kicking myself for all the years I didn’t do this.

➰ I moved all our tinned food and dry goods aka pasta/flour/quinoa etc to eye level in our pantry so we could easily see what we have. This helps when I'm blankly staring into the pantry for dinner inspo! My brother in law also writes the expiry date on the top of tins so you don't miss it, which is a great tip too.

➰ I created a list on our fridge of everything that’s in our freezer. Honestly we never used to know what was in there, now when we’re thinking about cooking dinner it keeps frozen meat or veggies we have top of mind.

➰ I pour any remaining unused liquids like passata/curry sauce/coconut milk etc into ice cube trays. They're then frozen and moved to another container to use in a dish another night. This was a great @sarahwilson tip as I often had just little amounts left that would go wasted.

Statistics from Food Wise & Oz Harvest.