Inflation and food costs are on the rise – yet nearly 21% of all food wasted happens on a household level. That equates to nearly $2,000* worth of food wasted per household per year.
With the United Nations’ International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste taking this month on September 29th, we thought we’d put together a list of tips to support waste reduction at home.
- Save your kitchen scraps (onion skins, vegetable tops, skins, and roots, wilted greens, and bones) and use them to make delicious soup stock! Store them in a container in the freezer or fridge until you’re ready to use them.
- To keep your carrots from going soft, trim the greens off, put the carrots in an airtight container filled with water, and store it in the fridge.
- Freeze, preserve, or can surplus fruits and vegetables, especially abundant seasonal produce, to make them last until you are ready to use them.
- Best before dates are often misinterpreted as expiry dates, when in fact, they are the manufacturer’s best guess for how long a food item will be at its peak quality. Food products that have surpassed their best before dates (but not their expiry dates) are still perfectly safe to eat.
- Store potatoes in a cool, dry place far away from onions! Storing potatoes and onions together causes them to ripen and spoil faster.
- Dry leftover herbs on a windowsill or on a baking sheet in the oven until dry and crush them up for quick seasoning.
- Save the roots of your green onions and place them in water near plenty of light. Replace the water every other day and watch them re-grow!
* Figure according to The Avoidable Crisis of Food Waste, available to read at www.secondharvest.ca/research.
