Reduce your food waste

Grown in Hackney
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

What do you think about when someone mentions the causes of climate change? One thing you may not think about is the food on your plate and its journey from farm to fork. It’s hard to fully comprehend that at every step of the way there is some element of food waste, and that food waste is a contributing factor to rising greenhouse gases.

Perhaps people assume that one little decomposing bag of salad or a few carrots won’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but we are needlessly wasting food on such a massive scale that it is now a global problem.

As termed by The Climate Lab, food waste really is the world’s dumbest problem. More than one third of all food produced globally is either wasted or spoiled. And yet one person in every nine on this planet are suffering from chronic undernourishment.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the land devoted to producing wasted food would be the second-largest country in the world. This is almost unimaginable.

How can this much land be used to produce food that NEVER GETS EATEN?

The good news is that reducing food waste is relatively easy to fix on an individual level.

Here are some easy ways to do it.

1. Be realistic about how much food you actually need by creating meal plans and shopping lists. My rule of thumb is never to shop hungry and to shop little and often.

2. Don’t over-estimate how much you’ll eat, and if you make too much then be creative with cooking new meals using up leftovers. And don’t forget to use your freezer.

3. Learn how to store food properly. Sounds obvious? Make sure you know which fruit and veg should be stored at room temperature, and which you can stick in the fridge to make them last longer. Check out this handy infograph from the Food Republic.

3. Understand the difference between use by, and best before expiry dates and use these as guidelines not a rule of thumb. You can use your judgement and a bit of common sense when seeing if food has gone off, for example one way to test eggs is by putting them in water, if they sink they’re fine to eat.

4. Reduce food related packaging by buying in bulk or choosing loose products. Check out upcoming opening of UK Bulk Market in Hackney and Food for All in Stoke Newington which both sell unpackaged produce which you can buy by weight.

5. Compost food waste if you can, this turns food waste in nutrient-rich fertiliser and keeps food waste out of landfill.

6. And lastly, find your local food banks or food waste organisations to donate anything you cannot use. Here are a few to check out: OLIO, FareShare, Plan Zheroes, City Harvest, Hackney Food Bank.

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