Chew on this: current figures of how much food waste happens worldwide each year are so high, they’re hard to digest. It’s estimated that individuals and businesses throw away around 31% of all the food produced in the US annually. That’s nearly 130 billion tons!
For the naughtiest citizen offenders, that can be as much as 389 kg of food waste for one human being in a year. Not only is that number alone staggering, but it gets worse when you consider that all that food decomposing in landfills will lead to the emission of methane gas, a GHG with 26x the earth-warming potential as CO2.
We need solutions to food waste now more than ever, such as finding ways to repurpose edible food, food spoil prevention (see our video above on food container solutions), composting discarded food, and overall more conscious consumerism.
Let’s get to plating and serving up some food waste solutions to keep your kitchen, belly, garden, and the environment healthy and waste-free. Did we also mention that by preventing food waste you’ll save money?
Contents: Tips For How To Reduce Food Waste At Home
- Keep Your Fridge Organized Jump to section
- Proper Food Storage Jump to section
- Preserve Food Jump to section
- Buy “Ugly” Produce & Discounted Groceries Jump to section
- Cook Smaller Meals Jump to section
- Use Everything You Can Jump to section
- Cook With Scraps Jump to section
- Feed Food Scraps To Animals Jump to section
- Compost Everything Else Jump to section
- Large-Scale Food Waste Management Solutions Jump to section
Keep Your Fridge Organized
If the back of your fridge is like Tales from the Crypt, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, it’s commonplace for even the most meticulous of individuals to relegate the top back fridge corner to their little science horrors.
That said, no more forgetting things in the back of the fridge or the freezer! To keep things fresh and divert food waste, you’ve got to keep your fridge organized. That means clean, clearly labeled, and stacked.
Start by sorting so that food that will go off first is the first thing clearly visible and in-front, with a decreasing level of priority as they move toward the back of the fridge.
Keep a list of the food bought on hand, and make a note of all the use-by labels. It may sound neat freak-ish, however, a recent study indicated that these small efforts save money (substantially) and lead to less food system waste.
Proper Food Storage
Proper food storage is crucial for your health and safety—and a crucial way to avoid food wasted.
When storing and organizing things like meal prep and leftovers, use plastic-free food storage containers are the best ways to ensure food stays fresh, hygienic, and delicious. Why plastic-free?
Not only because it then doubles as a food waste packaging solution, but because the plastic is likely to be emitting countless chemicals (for example, BPA and phthalates) that leach into food. Glass jars are probably the most popular choice, plus they’re free, given you can all upcycle them after use from purchased foodstuffs.
But glass isn’t the only acceptable material. Beeswax wraps, silicone options, stainless steel options, and bamboo are also sustainable options.
If you still own old Tupperware, then repurpose in new creative ways—like turning them into a jewelry box, art supply storage, compost collector, or a planter.
Preserve Food
Preserve food, preserve our planet; they go hand in hand. Which means, saving the Earth can be a tasty job! We love a win-win.
By learning food preservation methods, you not only ensure that you and your family have nutritious, whole foods, but you also avoid food waste. These methods include:
- Freezing: If food prep or DIY projects aren’t your thing, freezing with the safest food storage containers is the most convenient way to preserve foods. In some cases, properly frozen food can be stored for months or even years.
- Pickling: While not among more innovative food waste solutions, pickling is a tried and true one. It’s a type of fermentation that happens when foods are soaked in acidic liquid (namely vinegar). Not only limited to cucumbers, pickling turns all kinds of fruits and vegetables into tasty snacks. Other pickling ideas: beets, ginger, jalapenos, olives, asparagus, onions, peaches, carrots, radishes, apples, snap peas, garlic, eggs.
- Fermenting: To ferment foods, you must induce bacteria to react in a way that is naturally present in our environment and the sugars inside food. Since there are a number of variables in symbiosis, fermenting is one of the more challenging methods, some easier than others. The most popular are sourdough, kimchi, tempeh, and kombucha.
- Dehydrating: Herbs, spices, teas, dried fruits, and beef jerky are all common food items you’ll see dehydrated. It’s usually done with an oven, in the sun, or with a dehydrator.
- Canning: Canning is one of the best hacks to extend the life of food, but we can’t emphasize enough that safe home canning needs solid research and proper tools to avoid botulism. It works by heating foods in jars to a temperature (and often under pressure) that kills any harmful microorganisms and inactivating enzymes that lead to food spoiling.
- Juicing: If you’ve got a juicer or blender, give expiring fruits and veggies have a further life in them thanks to juicing. You can then consume these yummy juices or add to smoothies, soups, or kombucha.
- Curing Curing typically refers to infusing meats with a brine of salt, sugar, [and] nitrite to make it last longer. Refer to this guide for a plethora of meat and fish videos, recipes, and cheat sheets about curing theory, necessary equipment, and instructions.
Especially if you’re getting into self-sufficient homesteading, these skills are necessary to avoid food waste from your garden’s autumn abundance.
Buy “Ugly” Produce & Discounted Groceries
Meat with 30% off stickers, the discount baked goods rack, the almost “sell-by” meats, ugly fruits, and so forth: these will all get thrown away to waste if not purchased that day, but they’re all still perfectly fine to eat. (Sell by dates are not the same as expiration dates).
Some companies will even deliver “ugly” foods to you with a sustainable subscription box some of which are delivered monthly. Or you can start a relationship with a farmer at your local farmer’s market to get your hands on some delicious ugly produce or soon-to-expire products.
Here are basic guidelines for when food is safe to eat:
- Milk: Usually safe after one week after selling
- Eggs: Often fine 3–5 weeks from the date of purchase
- Poultry and seafood: Cook or freeze within one or two days after purchase
- Beef or pork: Cook or freeze within three-five days
- Canned goods: Good for 5–18 months, depending on the acidity of the product
So the next time you hit the shops, buy ugly! This is one consumer-driven grocery store food waste solution that will save you money, as well as our beautiful planet.
Cook Smaller Meals
If everyone in the world lived and ate like the average American, we would need more than four Earths. But we don’t have four Earths, so we’d better cut down on excess food.
One of the simplest and most sustainable food waste solutions is to cook smaller meals. Especially if you’re someone who rarely touches leftovers, why cook a pot of spaghetti for twelve when there are only one or two eating it?
Start adjuting your conumption habits by planning at least a few meals for each week. This will also stop you from purchasing too much at the grocery store. It’s also smart to coordinate your meals to use slightly similar ingredients for the next recipe. For example, if you plan to eat a spinach salad one night, then use it in a white lasagna recipe the next.
Educate yourself about how much food the body needs, too. Did you know the body can only effectively use 20–25 g of a high-quality protein in one meal? Now consider that one ounce of red meat contains about ~6 grams of protein and that it’s not uncommon for people to eat 16 ounces of steak in a meal. That’s 96 grams of protein, or quadruple what the body can even process into muscle fiber!
Not only is that bad for your liver, but it’s bad for your wallet. One pack of steak could go a whole lot farther if we learned a little something about portion control.
Not even accounting for excess consumption, the average American loses almost $2000 to food waste every year (!) meaning this is just as much an economic solution as it is a solution to food waste in America.
Use Everything You Can
When a recipe calls for something, use it to its entirety, and maybe even have the ingredient stretch out to multiple meals.
For example, maybe you cook a Thanksgiving turkey. Don’t just toss the scraps! That carcass can be picked and boiled down for a delicious and nutritious broth, which provides you a soup or pasta base for another couple of meals. The leftover turkey meat can be used for yummy sandwiches, soups, or casseroles in the coming days, meaning this one of the most efficient food waste solutions at home, too.
Cook With Scraps
Your zero waste kitchen can extend to zero waste cooking. After all, the amount that really needs to be “leftover” is extremely minimal. You can find countless cool ways to use rather than toss food that isn’t being included in your recipe.
Here are some scrap-happy solutions to reduce food waste:
- Vegetable peels and scraps can be boiled with salt and made into soup stock.
- Egg shells can be dried and ground up onto a homemade calcium supplement.
- Soft apples or blueberries cook deliciously into oatmeal or pancakes.
- Stale bread makes perfect bread crumbs, croutons, or bread pudding.
- Veggies starting to wilt can be added to stir-fries or soups. Leafy veggies can be blended and made into pesto.
- Old cheese rinds can be added to soups or pasta sauces.
- Blend up radish or carrot greens with almonds, basil, and olive oil and you have a hearty pesto.
- Squash or pumpkin seeds can be seasoned and roasted in the oven.
- Leftover bones and meat can be used to make nutritious bone broth. Fat trimmings can be rendered down into tallow to cook with.
- Peel melon rinds and stuff them in the jar, add salt, water and spices, and let the jar sit for a few days. The naturally occurring bacteria on the watermelon will ferment the rinds into tangy “pickles.
- After making almond milk, dry your leftover almond pulp in the oven then grind it into almond flour.
- If you’re a bread baker, save your sourdough discard from feedings to use in pancakes and other baked goods.
Feed Food Scraps To Animals
Giving food surplus to animals is a solution to food waste supported by the EPA, WWF, Harvard Food Law, and the UN, to name a few. That said, many leftovers aren’t good for cats and dogs, so be sure to do your research, speak with your vet, and generally keep it to leftover protein like beef or pork.
In terms of donating leftover food for farm animals, contact your local solid waste, county agricultural extension office, or public health agency for more information.
After all, there’s around 1.3 billion of global food waste that could be safely turned into animal feed, which would also serve to decrease the emissions and land use the animal agriculture industry is responsible for. Feeding vegetable scraps to animals means a more circular system that repurposes nutrients to feed livestock, which can also help mitigate other major environmental impacts of making livestock feed crops like land, energy, and water use.
If you have a your own animals (even if it’s just a few chickens), research what’s safe for them and start there.
Compost Everything Else
Have we told you lately how much we love the magic of composting?
It’s a necessary way to reduce landfill waste and when implemented on a wide scale, composting significantly reduces factors that contribute to climate change by recyclingscraps back into 100% organic elements. Composting is also produces a much needed earth-born material. It’s called humus, which garden enthusiasts refer to as “black gold”, because it has massive potential for revitalizing soils, increasing crop yields, and reviving the environment. Sounds a lot better than becoming greenhouse gasses in landfill to us.
Since urban dwellings often consist of small footprint apartments with little-to-no outdoor access, organic waste finds its way into landfills sadly in droves. An EPA study found that more than 50% of non-industrial food waste in the United States ended up in a landfill (as a reminder, where it contributes to methane production) and just 4% became compost.
Meanwhile, the UN says composting can potentially divert 150 kg of food waste per household per year from local garbage collection authorities.
An indoor compost bin can be the easiest, most hygienic, efficient way to compost practically anywhere, even small apartments.
We’ve got you covered with over 100 ideas of what you can compost at home right now. Depending on the size and type of organic matter, it should take 3–6 months to produce decent quality, healthy compost.
Large-Scale Food Waste Management Solutions
The broader scope of things involves large-scale approaches to a more sustainable food system to tackle how to reduce food waste in restaurants, grocery stores, schools, offices, and households alike.
Food waste happens within our current food system for lots of reasons, with some waste happening at all stages of food’s production and supply chain. From the farm gate to the various retail stages like drying, milling, transporting, or processing, food gets damaged or rots thanks to rodents, birds, insects, molds, or bacteria.
At the retail level, equipment malfunction, over-ordering, and culling of “ugly” produce results in more food loss—all before we even get to those horrifhying consumer waste statistics.
The EPA and USDA developed this hierarchy as a guideline of best practices for food recovery in our current food system. The top levels are considered “best,” since they create the most benefits for the environment, society and the economy.
- Source reduction: Reduce the volume of surplus food generated.
- Feed hungry people: Extra food donation to local food needs at shelters, food banks, and soup kitchens
- Feed animals: Divert scraps to livestock feed, which also helps with the large ecological footprint of feeding livestock
- Industrial uses: Methods to recover energy from food waste (i.e fuel conversion and energy recovery).
- Composting: Create a nutrient rich soil from food scraps
- Landfill / incineration: When all else fails.
Looking ahead, solutions to food waste in landfills on a large scale are promising for three main reasons: lower costs for waste disposal, the creation of an excellent end product via composting, and significant reduction in GHGs. The next step to reducing food waste is to make it as financially attractive as possible, which will fuel individuals, companies, and hospitals to reduce food waste at a more impactful level.
And fortunately, there are plenty of companies out there coming up innovative food waste solutions to try and change this system, including:
- Apeel: Their invisible, edible coating is made from wasted agricultural products like leftover grape skins from wine production, which can extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables by five times.
- Flashfood: This app allows shoppers to browse food items approaching their best before date, purchase them at a discount, and pick them up in participating stores.
- Food Cowboy: An app for food rescue that connects those most likely to have surplus produce (like farmers or truckers) with the emergency food charity sector (soup kitchens, churches, and homeless shelters).
- Full Harvest, Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Hungry Harvest: All noteworthy options for “wonky” fresh produce that won’t be sold in conventional grocery produce aisles.
- Neurolabs: Proprietary AI that is providing real-time shelf monitoring for supermarkets so that gaps in inventory can be better identified to stop food wastage.
- Olio: This app connects neighbors to share surplus food. Users upload a photo and description, and neighbors can claim the food before it’s wasted. Olio is currently the biggest food-sharing network in the world with 7 million plus users.
- Winnow: They help manage large-scale food waste through the power of AI and analytics.
By shifting from a linear model of production and consumption to a circular model, we can better impact our planet from seed to table.