The USDA estimates that between 30-40% of the entire US food supply is wasted each year! That equates to more than $160 billion of wasted food each year. Luckily, cutting down on your family’s food waste isn’t hard. Here are a few tips for saving food and money not only during the holiday season but all year round.
- Shop the fridge. Eat what you have on hand before heading to the store. Using up already opened food, eating leftovers and meal planning are simple ways to cut down on food waste. Smaller, more frequent shopping trips can also help reduce the “ I forgot I bought that and now it’s gone bad” phenomenon.
- Become a freezer fan. One of our best tools for combating food waste is the freezer. Dice, bag and freeze ready-to-turn fruits and vegetables for easy morning smoothies and winter soups and stews. Vegetable scraps, such as onion peels, carrot tops, celery cores and kale stems can also be frozen to make homemade vegetable stock.
- Store correctly. Much of our food goes bad because it isn’t stored optimally. Wash produce only when you’re ready to eat it to avoid mold. Store leafy greens wrapped in a damp cloth to extend their freshness and keep ethylene producing produce (mostly fruits) away from ethylene sensitive produce (mostly vegetables) to avoid premature spoilage.
- Compost. Some food waste is bound to happen but we can be wiser about our waste. Food waste sent to the landfill can’t break down properly due to the lack of oxygen, as it is often sealed in plastic garbage bags and buried under other garbage. Decomposition is very slow in the landfill environment and it emits too much methane for the food to break down. By properly disposing of food waste through commercial or home composting systems, food scraps break down quickly and completely, allowing it to return to the earth to create healthy, rich soil fertilizer.
Using these tips throughout the holiday season will help make them habits you can keep all year round. If you have food waste tips that have worked for you, please leave a comment, we’d love to hear them.
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