Food waste solutions: how can we reduce waste at home?

All around the world we have a serious problem with food waste. We have people who don’t have enough to eat and others who have too much. The way food is seen in the areas of the world that have an abundance of it needs to change, and that change can start with you!

Choose the food items in your store that will go out of date the quickest and use them straight away to stop supermarket food waste.

What is food waste?

Food waste is the excess food that we don’t eat. This could be the food that’s thrown out of supermarkets because it hasn’t been bought, that’s chucked in the bin after you can’t eat all of your meal, or however else food ends up in the landfill.

Food waste facts

To teach you more about food waste, and why waste reduction is so important, check out these facts we’ve put together:

• The energy wasted to produce food in South Africa that’s not eaten every year is enough to keep the city of Johannesburg running for around 16 weeks!

• 44% of all our fruit and veg becomes food waste.

• One-third of all our food, which is around 10 million tonnes, is never eaten and ends up in landfills.

• Methane gas and C02 is released from food waste that ends up in landfills.

• If we don’t look at ways to reduce waste, we’re going to continue wasting energy, water, and money, and leading our planet down a slippery slope of climate change, deforestation, and poisoning our land with over farming.

Pretty shocking facts, right? It’s clear to see we have a big problem on our hands, and we need to learn more about how to reduce waste immediately.

How can we reduce waste at home?

There are a number of ways to reduce waste at home, and you can start straight away! First of all, if you have leftovers from a meal, save them for tomorrow in a Tupperware container rather than chucking them out. You can also plan your meals for a week, making sure any leftover ingredients from one meal can be used for another rather than throwing them away.

If you know you have lots of ingredients that are going to go off soon in your fridge, chuck together a recipe that uses them - you’ll probably find some new flavour combinations you love!

You can also look at how to reduce food waste with food waste recycling, which takes all your leftovers - both edible and inedible parts of your food - and turns them into something useful. This is done through composting, and it’s so easy! You can have a little compost bin or set up a big heap in your garden. The wasted food will turn into compost, which you can use to grow new plants right in your garden!

By looking at food waste solutions and being more mindful about what we throw away, we can start to change the way the world views food. We’ll save energy, money, and will have more to go around - there’s no way that it’s a bad idea! So, start being more considerate with your food, and you’ll find yourself wasting less in no time. 

• Find where to put your compost pile and if you need to put it in something.

• Add leaves, weeds, and old plant material to your compost pile to start it.

• Find out what kitchen waste you can add to your compost pile.

• Add the food waste and wait!