What is food waste? Well simply its food that isn’t eaten. We’ve all done it, done a big shop, stacked up the fridge, topped up the cupboards at home and then realized a week later that you forgot about the sliced carrots in the veg drawer, or missed the packet of ham at the back of the fridge which is now out of date. Or we’ve gotten our portion sizes wrong and scraped the rest into the bin. Not only is this hurtful to our pocket, but to the environment too.

In a report published by Zero Waste Scotland in 2016, it was calculated that 456,000 tons of food waste were collected. That’s even more than the calculated plastic waste which was 224,000 tons. From the 456,000 tons collected, only 93,000 tons went to dedicated food waste recycling facilities, the rest went directly to landfill sites. Meaning that food waste is one of the biggest carbon footprint contributors in Scotland, producing 1.9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e).

Before and after - freshly stocked up food shop compared to the produce wasted from the same food shop.

But what can we do, as individuals and households to reduce this? Well, there are several ways, and surprisingly, they are quite simple.

We can reduce our waste before we even get to the shop. Plan out your weekly menu, what you are going to cook for dinner each day, what you’re going to need for the kids snacks and for any family pack lunches. Don’t forget to check in the fridge and the cupboard first though, to make sure that you don’t end up buying something you already have stocked up!

Freezing food. If you have something in the fridge that’s about to go off, or you’ve fruit that isn’t being eaten quick enough, put it in the freezer. Frozen fruit makes for perfect smoothies - healthy, tasty, and non – wasteful, it’s win win! If you’ve been over generous with portion sizes, no problem. Add anything extra into freezer safe containers and save for a later date. Have some wine left in the bottle? (Yes, that does actually happen sometimes!) Pour it into ice trays, freeze and then add it in to that recipe with the wine that you’ve always been meaning to try!

Instead of making one big shopping trip, maybe make a couple of smaller ones throughout the week. Despite our intentions, plans often change and you may end up having to change your menu plans, or end up eating out or even eating leftovers from the night before instead of cooking. When you only shop for the next few days at a time, you are more likely to buy only the items that you will actually need, knowing you'll be back for more shopping in a couple of days.

Rotating your food when packing it away is another great tip. Place the newly bought items to the back of your storage area, pushing the foods previously stored to the front so that they will be used first before its expiry date. You could even create an ‘eat me first’ box or shelf in your cupboard of your fridge. So everyone knows that the foods in the box need to be eaten and used up before they reach for the other choices.

These are just some of the things that can be done to help up reduce our food waste. For those of you who follow our social media pages, you will have seen I (Amanda) made a pledge that this year I am going to be more thoughtful about what food I buy and how I buy it, and some of these tips have already made a difference in my shopping and my cooking habbits as well as to my purse! It doesn’t seem like much, but we all need to start somewhere, and if everyone makes a small change, it will soon add up a much larger change.

Food waste worse than plastic for climate change says Zero Waste Scotland | Zero Waste Scotland