Want to reduce food waste?

I've got a few ideas to share.

Photo by Scott Warman on Unsplash

It was midmorning at my old job, and my colleague Jessica was laughing so hard that she was crying.

A decade ahead of me in the parenting game, Jessica had just seen me pull out my morning snack, an apple that bore the classic markings of a toddler: A few tiny nibbles in an otherwise gorgeous piece of fruit. The bite marks had gone a bit brown since breakfast time. She wasn’t laughing at me eating it, per se, but in recognition of the predicament of a perfectly good piece of fruit that had been unceremoniously rejected.

Child-gnawed apples aren’t the only food I saw from the compost heap. A quarter of a quesadilla that my son didn’t eat? Into the fridge: I’ll eat it as a snack at some point. I look at a stale baguette and see French toast. The leftovers from the post-funeral dinner last week? I was thrilled to see my brother-in-law shoveling them into takeaway boxes. If it is edible, I am not throwing it away. You might say I have an extreme aversion to food waste.

Some is this is just due to my frugal Yankee roots, but I’ve upped my vigilance about wasted food since I learned that food waste is a huge climate issue. You’ve likely heard this before: Approximately 1/3 of all food is never eaten. It’s a big deal because, as the authors of Project Drawdown write:

“When food is wasted, all the energy, resources, and money that went into producing, processing, packaging, and transporting it are wasted, too.  Producing uneaten food squanders a whole host of resources—seeds, water, energy, land, fertilizer, hours of labor, financial capital—and generates greenhouse gases at every stage. The food we waste is responsible for roughly 8 percent of global emissions.”

All of us can do more to overhaul how we shop and eat to reflect the how serious a problem food waste is. Here’s how I recommend you tackle the problem:

Audit your waste

First, ask yourself: What food do I throw out? You may already know the answer, but if not, keep a list somewhere in the kitchen and write down all the food you end up throwing out over the course of a week or two. Some patterns may emerge that may help you quickly reduce waste, say, if you are constantly tossing half your child’s breakfast, try serving a smaller portion, or if cold cuts are always going in the trash, ask the deli counter for a smaller amount next time.

Shop differently

Reducing food waste begins at the store. Many people will tell you that meal planning is the road to reducing food waste, and I am sure that it can be, but I don’t meal plan often, so I wouldn’t know. What is important is to have a realistic idea of how many meals you need to make in the days ahead and limit the super-perishable purchases, especially meat and poultry to what you know you will definitely eat. You might even stop buying things you know always go bad; for example, I almost never buy boxed salad mixes anymore because whole heads of lettuce last so much longer. And be wary of warehouse club sizes: A gallon of olives or giant tub of hummus is only a bargain if you’ll really manage to eat it all.

Shift your POV

When you are deciding whether or not to throw food out, the rules are simple: If it’s edible, it’s not garbage. Yes, even that little bit of something or another should be saved. (And the semi-edible stuff like vegetable peelings and the dried-up bread heels shouldn’t go in the trash either: You should compost them.) The exception is animal flesh, which can only be composted in large municipal compost programs (though your dog might like these).

Let go of fear

“Sell by” and “best if used by” dates are absolutely meaningless. Use your sense of smell to determine if something is actually past its prime. If you’re unsure, taste it: A sip of curdled milk won’t poison you—I promise. Of course, you should be wary of anything that’s been left out longer than two hours, which can harbor dangerous bacteria.

Practice better hygiene

We’ve gotten pretty good about food waste in our house, but one weak point in my defense against waste are jarred items that last a long time. I can’t count how many times I’ve opened a jar of salsa to discover that it has fuzzy layer of mold on top. This can be prevented with better hygiene. When you have taco night, put a dedicated spoon into the salsa and don’t let it touch anything else; same goes for the sauerkraut. If you can buy sour cream in a tube, it’s prevents the inevitable premature spoilage. 

Freeze it

If you’re not sure you’ll eat something before it goes bad, freeze it. You’ll be so thankful when you find that chili in the freezer on a night you don’t have a plan for dinner. Almost anything can be frozen—seriously anything, even milk, which I sometimes freeze if we are headed out of town (it’s not as delicious defrosted, but it is just fine for baking). Pre-vacay I’ll also all kinds of things that won’t last until we get back. 

Throw it in a smoothie

So many things can go into a smoothie: A little bit of leftover cooked oatmeal, fruit than came home in your child’s lunch uneaten, blueberries gone a little bit soft before you could finish the pint, a few last leaves of kale. We’ve got a serious Vitamix blender that can blend anything up smoothly, so I’m especially liberal in what I’ll blend. (By the way, I am a frugal person, but I really believe these blenders are worth every penny.)

Clean out the crisper first

I never let raw vegetables go to waste in part because I always shop the fridge before buying more produce. As a CSA members, we also end up with weird little amounts of veggies that aren’t enough to become a side dish on their own, so I use them up by adding them to soup, stir fry, fried rice, homemade pizzas, omelettes, and the like. There is no vegetable too small to save. 

Revive tired produce

Many sad vegetables will perk right up if you just add water. Limp lettuce can often be revived with a soak in a salad spinner full of ice-cold water. Root vegetables like carrots, potatoes, and radishes that have gone a bit soft will regain their crispness, if you peel and cut them and place them in water in the fridge. For large-leaf greens, like chard or kale, or herbs like parsley, I cut off the bottom of the stem and stand them in a jar of water (like a bouquet), so the leaves can such the water back up through their capillaries. The blackest bananas make the best banana bread. Mealy apple can get cooked down as applesauce; while a lackluster watermelon will still taste pretty good whizzed up in the blender with some lime juice and ice. 

Learn to love leftovers

I honestly don’t understand people who don’t like to eat leftovers (my own father included!). To me, leftovers are a gift: A meal I don’t have to cook! In my family we almost always eat leftovers for lunch (and sometimes for dinner later in the week with large dishes like lasagna or enchilada). There are lots of ways to reinvent leftovers, including a few that I list below.

Keep ‘em visible

We have a relatively small fridge, so things don’t tend to get forgotten in some dark corer, but if you don’t consider creating a designated spot in the fridge for leftovers that need to be eaten; label it, if you think it will help family members pay attention. I also like glass containers for the fridge because you can more easily see what you have that needs to get eaten up. 

Get chickens

I’m only half-kidding. When I asked the Living Small community on Instagram how they help lessen their food waste, more than one person mentioned their chickens—and one mentioned goats! You all also mentioned all the usual tactics of eating the kids’ scraps, freezing, broth-making, and the like, but this was one I hadn’t thought of, but I should have. My sister has a flock of chickens and I have seen firsthand that they are very good at eating up scraps.

You’ll find five more tips for how to creatively use up leftovers after the paywall, plus some further reading and this week’s links. If you’re curious, consider a paid subscription! Thank you so much for reading LIVING SMALL.