The First Place to Reduce Food Waste Is in Your Kitchen.
Food waste is the single largest component of our trash and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that there's a bounty of practical tips to help save money and reduce organic waste coming from home. For instance, start with the fridge.
Human beings spend a lot of time and resources into the growing and catching, harvesting and packaging, distributing and marketing of food. We buy it, we bring it home, we cook it and serve it, we clean up after it, and then, we throw a lot of it away. This cycle is repeated three times a day, for three meals every day.
The amount of water wasted is an astonishing hidden cost in the story of food waste. According to Ceres - a non-profit advocating for sustainable business practices and solutions - given the amount of food we waste as a nation, 21% of our fresh water that’s used to grow the food also gets wasted.
For example - an apple thrown away equals flushing a toilet seven times. A hamburger in the trash - 16 bathtubs of water, down the drain.
The easiest place to start is at home. The one thing most of us have in our kitchens, and many of us have at work, is a refrigerator. Getting to know what’s in it better, and using it more efficiently, can actually make a big difference in reducing waste. Correctly organizing your refrigerator, What are the coldest parts? What you’re supposed to be putting on the door. And lots of creative ways for storing your leftovers – like you’re supposed to have air getting all around stuff in the freezer, and using muffin tins to freeze things, and what you can freeze. It’s a lot of kitchen knowledge, I think, that helps not waste food.
Use First area of your fridge, “You put things that are close to going bad in the front, or in a special section, so you know what you really need to use up. Shopping in your pantry and refrigerator before you go to the grocery store, so you know you already have avocados and don’t need to buy more. Making a list is the biggest, easy one.”
