15 ms·

Reducing Wasted Food at Home

160 points by adrian_mrd 7y ago

ketzu 7y ago
> Find out how to store fruits and vegetables so they stay fresh longer inside or outside your refrigerator. That was my first thought when I opened the website. I kind of expected to see the answer to this on the site, not a tip this general, or maybe a reference to look it up.
- JeanMarcS 7y ago
  Wouldn’t it be wiser to stop selling packs ? Like when you go to outdoor markets where you can buy 3 carrots if that’s what you only need. And it’ll stop all the plastic waste too. But I understand it will be a supply chain nightmare
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Supermarkets sell loose fruit and veg too. Not for everything of course, but most of the more popular things (including carrots)
  - timthorn 7y ago
    > But I understand it will be a supply chain nightmare I'm not sure why? It's standard practice in UK supermarkets, although prepacked bags are also available.
    - JeanMarcS 7y ago
      Yes and I think in many European countries to. I was referring for the US (or maybe the biaised vision I have of it)
    - bengale 7y ago
      There was an interesting BBC show the other day about plastic waste and they were pointing out that buying loose vegetables in major supermarkets was between 20-50% more expensive than buying them prepackaged.
      - fredsir 7y ago
        For the consumer or the seller? I think I easily save 20-50% when I buy the amount I can eat before it goes bad instead of having to buy a larger amount because it's prepackaged in a too-big-for-me package. Come to think of it, I never throw out stuff like fruit which I buy "per piece" instead of prepackaged, where as carrots which usually only comes prepackaged where I shop is something I often have to throw out of because the last ones have gone bad before I got to them. This have meant I rarely eat carrots anymore and instead buy something else that isn't prepackaged. Same thing with bread actually. But then they started selling smaller breads all over the country to combat food waste, and it really has, I don't remember throwing out bread in the last couple of years.
        krsrhe 7y ago
        Have you tried eating more vegetables? It’s not hard for one person to eat 2lbs of carrots in the weeks before they go bad in a fridge.
        fredsir 7y ago
        I just don’t like that many carrots. Would prefer to be able to buy the couple I want. And yes, I do eat plenty of vegetables. I follow a whole-food plant-based diet and have done so for almost 7 years.
        NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        For the consumer. I really doubt that the supermarket pays a different price by getting them in big boxes rather than plastic bags. If they do, it's probably less. :) Carrots and all root veg will easily keep for a couple of months or so if you store them in the fridge. Make sure they're completely dry, don't wash - they keep better - and remove any sprouting tops, then keep in an air tight box or bag, or as second best, just in the non-ventilated drawer of the fridge. Or about as long in sand if you have a cool dry cellar or garage to serve as makeshift root cellar. Store flat in plastic trays or tubs covered with dry horticultural sand or soil.
  - kyriakos 7y ago
    That's probably a thing in some countries. Where I live you get to pick and buy as much as you want. There are no packs for fruit and vegetables. There are some exceptions like strawberries but even those are available to pick as well as packaged.
- viraptor 7y ago
  Also surprised the wasn't an answer. Here's mine: Putting vegetables in a wet canvas bag in the refrigerator keeps them fresh for much longer. This way you can store things for weeks which would otherwise spoil in days.
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    Another way is to take them out every couple days and rinse thoroughly in water. Lettuce especially stays crisp this way.
mogadsheu 7y ago
The American food supply chain has a luxuriously high waste rate. It’s an issue that a few companies are trying to tackle, eg Imperfect Produce. Wasted food in the home though is mostly a cultural/price issue, as well as a misalignment issue between seller and consumer. Grocery stores try and increase AOV by selling you a 3lb bundle of carrots because they believe it to be profit maximizing to do so, at the cost of deadweight loss borne by the customer if they don’t eat all that they buy.
- lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
  I believe it to also be caused by the huge amount of subsidies American farmers receive from the US government, pretty much incentivizing them to grow and sell as much food as they possibly can.
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- benj111 7y ago
  Carrots seem like a poor example, they are literally meant to store over winter. Lettuce? Id struggle to eat 3lb of lettuce before it went off.
  - galangalalgol 7y ago
    if we want to reduce waste switching to frozen instead of fresh would help. most wastage occurs on market shelves anyway. many foods are more nutritious when kept frozen until consumption. most even. but I have no answer for the aesthetics or texture.
    - benj111 7y ago
      Frozen lettuce?
      - galangalalgol 7y ago
m0zg 7y ago
I've found that the best way to reduce wasted food at home is by establishing and maintaining your food budget (groceries _and_ eating out), and gradually reducing it until you don't have any wasted food. People (myself included) get carried away buying stuff, even groceries. Without planning you will quite easily blow past your budget and then stuff will sit in your fridge and rot. Or another scenario: you buy a bunch of groceries and then eat fast food all week and throw most of your groceries away. Gotta use what you bought or it will go bad. It's very easy for a family of 3 in the US to spend $2K/mo on food and throw most of the groceries away. If you drive that down to $1K/mo, you can eat pretty well, and there won't be much wastage.
- lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
  I think part of the problem is, at least in my experience, buying stuff you tell yourself that you’ll eat but rarely do. If I were to be more honest with myself in a store, I’d cut down on food waste. My problem is I see certain things, and think to myself, oh I’ll eat those. But in reality, only ideally I’d eat those. What ends up happening is I get hungry and look into the fridge for something to eat, only to see that exact thing staring me right in the face before I say, damn nothing to eat. As well, going to the store more often. Buying only a couple or three days worth of groceries makes it easy to lower food waste. When I try to buy over a weeks worth of groceries I find myself having to throw away things more often.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    There's an easy solution to the problem you describe: intermittent fasting once a week. You eat your dinner, and then eat nothing at all until the next dinner. Longer intervals are also possible, but I've found that for me 24 hours works the best. You won't believe how appetizing even the most unappealing items in your fridge will look after just one day of not eating anything, especially if you're physically active.
  - fredsir 7y ago
    > As well, going to the store more often. Buying only a couple or three days worth of groceries makes it easy to lower food waste. When I try to buy over a weeks worth of groceries I find myself having to throw away things more often. Exact opposite is true for my family. If I meal plan and shop once a week, we eat everything because everything was bought for a specific purpose. If we are more loose with it, we buy too much, and end up throwing out stuff. Of course, you could meal plan for 2 days or 3 days and also go to the store that often, but that seems like a complete waste of time. Save for the occasional spontaneous idea, or for things that can't keep for a whole week, meal planning and shopping once a week have cut down our food-budget and waste significantly. Of course, learning to buy the right amounts for a whole week takes a while. A couple of weeks at least.
tobtoh 7y ago
If you don't have a garden (ie live in an apartment etc), is there any benefit (reduced methane?) to composting food scraps before throwing the soil in the trash/landfill?
- my_username_is_ 7y ago
  Not my area of expertise here, but I would think that doing so would help by reducing the overall volume of your waste. As food breaks down into soil, it packs tighter and reduces its overall volume. I assume that garbage trucks are limited by the volume that they can carry, not the weight, so reducing your waste volume should help reduce your overall carbon footprint by marginally reducing the number of vehicle-trips that it takes to collect your waste. That being said, I would have to think that reducing the amount of waste that you create in the first place will have a bigger impact than reducing the volume of a given mass of waste.
- jvanvleet 7y ago
  I really believe you know someone that could use the compost. I have three other families feeding mine.
amthewiz 7y ago
People go their entire lives without knowing what it is like to go without food for a day. They take it for granted. Also, I believe parents generally don't teach kids to respect food. It probably starts by letting a toddler feed him/herself too early and in the process normalizing food wastage. There is also a first world etiquette of leaving some food in the plate. I have seen people habitually do it.
- rangibaby 7y ago
  > There is also a first world etiquette of leaving some food in the plate. I have seen people habitually do it. I think it’s a status thing, to show that you are rich enough that you can just throw away food. You have probably heard or seen the horror stories about (rich) Chinese tourists and buffets when they visit overseas. OTOH My friend majorly pissed off our (normal for China) dinner host in southern China by putting food on his plate then not eating all of it. It’s the same in Japan, and Japanese buffets literally fine people for taking food and not eating it.
  - benj111 7y ago
    "I think it’s a status thing" I'd say its a politeness/not appearing greedy thing, certainly from a food in the centre of the table point of view. Drives me mad when at the end on a dinner party you have one potato, one carrot stick, one chunk of bread. This is from a UK point of view, I understand there are different motivations elsewhere.
    - asark 7y ago
      Food portions and being (or acting) unable to finish all but the daintiest serving sizes definitely has a class component to it, at least in the US. I think this behavior's shifted "down" a notch or so, alongside fitness-as-a-class-marker (see also: athleisure wear) as the upper-middle and more perceptive anxious/striving middle classes have latched onto it. In tech circle's I'd guess it's very common, they consisting largely of those two class groups (using a Fussellian system of classification, here). Of course our meal serving sizes do probably vary more than in most (saner) countries. On the low end of the dining-out spectrum, one is often served enough food for two or more meals. There's an "if I don't feel stuffed to the point of nigh-immobility, I got ripped off" attitude in that sector of the market.
GordonS 7y ago
I find a good way to reduce food waste is to plan your meals a week in advance, so you do 1 big shop and get everything you need for the coming week. That way, you buy exactly what you need. You also know when you're going to need everything, so if there are any short-lived things (cut herbs, for example) that you need for a meal later in the week, you can get them just in time.
atoav 7y ago
I rarely ever throw food away, and if I have to (once every two months or so) I consider it a shame. Storing things the right way is important, but much more important is not buying too much. My solution is that I never use a shopping cart but my own bag. When you have to carry it you will have a much better feeling if it is too much. This is ofc harder if you have kids.
- punjabisingh 7y ago
  I'm using the same technique but at the checkout. Once my reusable bags fill up, I leave the rest. Also this technique helps in letting go of that packaged/junk food at the checkout.
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    So instead of just not grabbing junk food, you leave it to make more work for the store employees? Unless you restock the shelves yourself, that is incredibly inconsiderate. Also, if an item is frozen, refridgerated, or fresh produce it likely ends up in the trash as spoilage, since a busy cashier won't have time to restock abandoned items.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Also, aren't items already scanned before they enter the bag? I don't understand how leaving the rest could actually play out unless the cashier had to then void each one.
- spodek 7y ago
  > harder if you have kids. Bea Johnson's family of four produces less than a mason jar of trash per year. https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroWasteHome https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroWasteHome Not speaking to atoav in particular, but it's tempting to make excuses why we don't do what others do that we want to but aren't. If we look for role models instead of excuses, we motivate ourselves to reach more of our potential. In her case, reducing the waste seems to have brought her family together more. It doesn't seem to be a burden, just a one-time shift.
Theodores 7y ago
This message is not a new one and it isn't really working. People kind of know - nobody walks into a supermarket to specifically buy stuff just to put in the rubbish bin, do they? I think there needs to be more radical solutions. For instance a sugar tax or a different tax band for microwave ready meals. We have all been there, after a hard week to have gone shopping to get the healthy veg and some ready prepared meal items, e.g. microwaveable or just a pizza that can be shoved in the oven. We get back tired from the shopping trip and don't make that salad, we put the pizza in the oven. The next day we do the same. Then the working week takes over and that once prime condition veg is not looking so good. We can't bring ourselves to throwing it out so we hold on to it until it is truly rotten. Meanwhile we have some other lazy beige foods. It is an easy trap to fall into and we have all been there. But what if that instant pizza cost as much as a restaurant pizza? Or that microwave meal cost the same as a pub meal? You would probably go for proper food. People could reduce food waste in the days before refrigeration, to not waste a thing. Ask anyone who is old enough to have known WW2. Rationing was a way of reducing waste, but, what else has changed? The junk food. This needs to be taxed so that people don't leave the good stuff to go rotten. Junk also needs to be taxed so poor people who view vitamins as a luxury don't eat it.
louismerlin 7y ago
A huge change in my food waste output took place when I stopped going to the supermarket, and instead started going to the local market once a week. Having to plan out what I needed for the week really changed my behavior for the better. (+ supporting local farmers + reducing plastic consumption)
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  How often would you go to the supermarket otherwise? My impression was that going once a week was the norm (I've never consistently done grocery so I dont know...)
  - louismerlin 7y ago
    There is a supermarket between my university and my home, so it was extremely easy for me to hop in every 2 or 3 days.
- Shivetya 7y ago
  mine changed when I decided that since I passed the supermarket on the way home that I should only buy fresh foods I would consume from one day to the next. plus stopping daily meant I could more easily vary my eating
- spodek 7y ago
  A related change for me came when I joined a CSA http://joshuaspodek.com/farm-food-summer http://joshuaspodek.com/farm-food-summer and gave myself the rule to waste no food. Since I didn't choose what food I'd get and they design the shares for a family not just one person, it forced me to use new foods and learn what grew near me and barely go elsewhere. The experience taught me a lot about how to see plants (and fungi) and prepare them.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > Having to plan out what I needed for the week really changed my behavior for the better. Trying to plan for the week and shop for it on one day is the cause of most of our food waste, because we inevitably change plans (voluntarily or involuntarily). We are actually trying to be better about going to the store more frequently and buying less in advance. We are also trying to actually use things we stockpile in the pantry, since we also have a problem with stocking canned and dry goods we forget about.
agumonkey 7y ago
There's an app (I know) called toogoodtogo that let businesses to sale things that won't be allowed to be sold next day. It's a cute step in the right direction. ps: also, who made a kind of compost bin to at least avoid bagging organic material to go into the recycling system ?
- lucb1e 7y ago
  When I was in Finland for a few months, we used Resq Club for this. I loved it. Wasn't as cheap as one might expect of leftover food that would otherwise be thrown away, but it's still worth it. I think the operate also in other northern European countries.
ciconia 7y ago
In practically all developed countries, agriculture is wholly dependent on subsidies financed with taxes. The price of alimentary products in the supermarket does not reflect the true cost of production. This, coupled with countries like China subsidising exports, leads to a "race to the bottom" situation in which there's constant pressure to drive prices down. One way to reduce waste would be to stop subsidising agriculture on a global level. This might be also be accompanied by raising the price of fuel and electricity. Before screaming bloody murder and downvoting, please consider the following: - roughly 50% of food in the US goes to waste [1]. Meaning you already pay double what you think you pay. - About 40% of people in the US are obese [2]. We're eating too much. - Modern agriculture is an environmentally destructive practice [3]. Reducing food consumption can reduce its environmental impact. - We have all become used to abundance - in practically all domains of life: water, food, energy, travel, communication. We have become desensitised to the real value of things, we have no conception of the externalities involved in producing them, and pass our lives on an infinite binge of blind consumption. On a personal level, each of us can make the transition to consuming food in a more reasonable and sober manner. Finally, educating people about food waste is not enough. What's needed is rather a coordinated effort to move to a new model where people consume what they physically need, rather than indulging momentary craving. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/american-food-waste/491513/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/america... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190629233657/https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190629233657/https://www.cdc.g... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agricu...
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  Add to what you said, we're eating too much sugar causing a health crisis no one's talking about (from eating sugar).
  - electriclove 7y ago
    So true! The sugar addiction is real and I just don't know how to kick it. For me, it is twisted in with my caffeine addiction and I struggle trying to ward off potential withdrawal migraines with wanting to stop caffeine and also wanting to make it through life/work.
pard68 7y ago
We waste practically zero organic waste. We have chickens which eat our waste food, which is minimal in itself. What they don't eat becomes compost n about three months time. We eat the eggs, approximately ten a day, and use the compost to grow food in our yard most of the year. All of this is on a .25 acre of land in a downtown setting.
- scruple 7y ago
  I really want to get into a place where I can keep chickens and bees. I'd love to learn more about your set up, if you're willing to share.
  - pard68 7y ago
    Sure! Our run is about 20'x30' with a 8'x4' coop in one corner. The perimeter of the run has a 6" post every 6' that stands 10' high. The top of all the posts are connected by a metal wire. On this wire we have plastic fencing (same gridded stuff that is used for construction, but dark green instead of construction orange) for the "roof" of the run. The sides are two types of fence. From ground to top is chicken wire fencing. This is strictly to discourage the hens from getting out. And the bottom 5' has very thick gauged wire fencing as well, which keeps predators out (though living in the downtown of a city that is just dogs really, and most dogs around us don't care because lots of people have chickens where we live). The compost system is setup so that there are four, 4'x4'x4' compost areas next to one another (constructed with pallets). Every three months we change which compost pile gets new material added to it. We mostly let the chickens do all the work of turning, and once a week we just go and throw everything back into the pile. It takes about 12 months for a pile to be ready to go, so we get a new 4'x4'x4' pile of compost every three months or so (I said 3 month turn around in my previous post, I was thinking of every three months we change piles, not ready compost every three months). Because we take so long to compost and because we have chickens that do much of the work of digesting, we compost everything we can. Normal stuff like vegetables and leaves, but also all our food, including bones and meat and sugars. There is a deer carcass in one of my piles right now, by the time we dug out that pile most of the bones will be dust, the skull will be pretty much the only thing left over. We never see any issues with bad germs in our compost because we let it cook so long and let the chickens eat the stuff that most people say not to compost (and birds have titanium stomachs). We use old and bad hay/straw from my wife's clients (she's a farrier and horse trainer) as the "browns" in the compost, which makes up the bulk of the matter in there.
alleskleber 7y ago
There's a tiny grocery store just a five minute walk away from my apartment. I treat it like an extended fridge. Whenever I need something it's just a short trip away. So there's no need to overstock food at home for me. But I get that not everybody has that opportunity.
- yostrovs 7y ago
  Stocking the fridge is not related to throwing away food. People that cook a great deal get a lot of benefit from having ingredients available.
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bane 7y ago
We've managed to eliminate a ton of food waste (and cost) by simply not buying frozen or bulk foods. Paradoxically, whenever we buy food like this, it always comes in boxes that are much too large to use at once and inevitably will end up forgotten at the back of the freezer or pantry until we throw it out later. Now we buy maybe 2 or 3 days worth of food at a time and our fridge basically just has raw ingredients and a few condiments in it. Usually a package of never frozen meat (beef or chicken mostly) and a few fresh veggies and mushrooms for side dishes (many of them keep well or even better outside of the fridge). The most prepackaged thing we eat these days is on pasta night, and that's just for the sauce out of the jar and some premade noodles. The rest of the sauce is fresh chopped veggies and it makes a delightfully chunky sauce. A favorite side dish is mashed squash in lieu of mashed potatoes. It takes time to cook a nice meal, and if it's possible to get the time (it's not easy!) I think everybody should do it. The frozen and bulk foods never resulted in a meal half as good. One nice side effect, if we increase the portions a bit, we get a quality packed lunch from the left overs. Our meals also have dramatically increased the volume of fresh vegetables and are definitely much more healthy than anything we used to eat. Are we trying to reduce waste? Not really, just trying to cook and eat better, but the side effect is great (and much cheaper as well!) It's also a nice change in daily routine to stop at the grocery a couple times per week. Our fridge went from slam packed full to mostly empty and we eat far better.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  It has even been talked in mainstream news. Supermarkets tricks are made for you to buy more than necessary. A very sad side effect of short term capitalism thinking.
  - 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
    Particularly if you live alone. Typically you can't buy fewer than 6 sausages in the UK, or in Germany finding anything less than a 2.5kg bag of potatoes can be tricky.
    - ncarroll 7y ago
m3kw9 7y ago
Costco is partly responsible
- lucb1e 7y ago
  That's an awfully short statement / quite a baseless comment. What does Costco even sell, are they a normal supermarket? Are other supermarkets not at fault? What does Costco do wrong compared to competitors (even if they are not alone, you seem to think them particularly responsible)?
  - lkbm 7y ago
    Costco's thing is that they're bulk quantities at a lower price. They'll either have larger bottles/bags/cans, or they'll package 2+ of the regular ones together. At my local supermarket, I can buy a single onion if I'd like. If I want a them pre-bagged, it's a 3LBs bag. At Costco, the option is a 10LB bag. 5LBs bags of mozzarella. 5LB and 10LBs bags of carrots. It's a great place to shop, especially for large families/groups, but if you're a small household then it will lend towards over-buying, simply because you can't get a 1-2 person quantity of most things. This morning, I walked to the store and bought a single avocado. If I'd gone to Costco, I would've had to get a bag of five. (Which is surprisingly few for Costco.) Here's a product list for Costco: https://queenbeecoupons.com/costco-price-list/ https://queenbeecoupons.com/costco-price-list/ Compare the quantities with what I can get from my local supermarket: https://www.heb.com/ https://www.heb.com/
Merrill 7y ago
Buying frozen, rather than fresh, vegetables is a good way to avoid waste. They are processed and frozen soon after picking, so nutrients are well preserved. They are kept in large frozen food warehouses which are energy efficient. There is no reduction in nutrients during transport, distribution and retailing, compared with fresh produce which spends several days deteriorating in refrigerated trucks and warehouses before it gets to the store. And, frozen vegetables can be kept a long time once they're in your freezer, especially in a chest freezer without automatic defrost.
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
  Tinned goods are also great for a similar reason
  - Merrill 7y ago
    Yes, especially for fruits that don't freeze well and for vegetables like crushed tomatoes, pickled beets, sauerkraut, etc. But one needs to watch the sodium and sugar content.
- seanwilson 7y ago
  It's always bugged me that frozen food gets demonised so much instead of people weighing up the objective pros and cons based on evidence. Same thing with microwave ovens, artificial sweeteners and MSG. Food science is difficult: this seems to create an environment where people make up, spread and strongly hold on to assertions that aren't evidence based.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    From Mother Jones: "Chill Out: Frozen Foods Are Just Fine", https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/benefit-of-frozen-foods/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/benefit-of-f... TJ's frozen Brussels sprouts at 99 cents for 16 oz are a winner.
- foxhop 7y ago
  You can also by fresh in season for really cheap and then freeze yourself. It's not a hard skill to pick up and it def saves even more money.
wyldfire 7y ago
> Compost food scraps rather than throwing them away. I wonder: my neighborhood has some common area that I could ask that we set aside for composting. Have anyone on HN ever setup a neighborhood compost? Any tips/suggestions?
- lucb1e 7y ago
  In Germany, the municipality maintains those. Bio waste is picked up every two weeks or so. We have a large (5x5x13dm or so) container that we share with our upstairs neighbors and is mainly filled with mowed grass and kitchen waste, though I think we only fill it up once every month and a half, or maybe two months, and that's in summer when the grass grows. In fall, there are also solutions for fallen leaves, but I don't remember what (we've lived here less than a year, I vaguely remember reading it but I've yet to see it). In the Netherlands, they put collection baskets (of like 1x1x1m) on many streets in that season.
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brahmwg 7y ago
Personally, I've reduced my food waste by eating almost primarily freeze-dried foods. They have a 30 year shelf life in most cases and just need a bit of hot water to be rehydrated, and it tastes just like fresh. The process of freeze-drying apparently keeps the nutritional value intact, as opposed to other preservation methods. It's great for planning meals for the week, and it's excellent for making delicious backpacking recipes! It seems in any given pack of fresh blueberries/strawberries/brocolli/whatever, inevitably some part of it gets moldy or subpar eating conditions. With the freeze dried equivalent, I know I have as-good-as-fresh ingredients that won't spoil anytime soon. I don't see myself ever buying fresh berries or brocolli or chicken ever again now that I've discovered freeze dried foods. It's just too efficient and convenient to have all these good quality foods on-demand that virtually never spoil. Edit: well actually I'd still buy fresh food... If I had my own freeze drier and freeze-dried them myself!
blisterpeanuts 7y ago
I'm surprised there's been no mention in the article or comments of gardening to grow one's own food. Gardening (generically encompassing both in-the-ground vegetable gardens and alternative growing methods such as greenhouse, hydroponics, and indoor grow stations in the basement etc.) inherently limits waste, encourages you to eat exactly as much as you grow, and allows sustainable replenishment of the soil, the atmosphere, and the general ecosystem. Of course, if you fill your yard with nothing but squash plants and harvest a ton of squash every fall, that's a bit of an extreme counter-example because you're not likely to eat that much squash, but even then you're going to give it away or sell it at the local farmer's market. But for the average food grower/amateur homesteader, you'll gradually develop a self-adapted menu of homegrown foods which you will be very pleased to consume as soon as they are ready, free of nasty chemicals and ripeness inhibitors, and full of nutrients that have not been lost in the production, transportation, and storage phases that commercial produce must necessarily undergo. You will eat locally grown produce that is adapted to your region, when and if it comes to maturity, and waste will not be your main concern, but rather the opposite -- if you have 12 potato plants, and they each produce 5-10 potatoes in August, you will accommodate the bounty by building a rack in the basement to store them over the winter -- literally a root cellar, which is what basements were originally for. Plus, it's fun, and vastly educational for children. Nothing is more satisfying than having your child help build the raised beds and plant the seeds, then seeing the seedlings come up and develop into mature plants that provide bounty for the dinner table. Experiencing the full cycle also encourages them to eat their vegetables. Raising egg chickens is also highly fulfilling and rewarding. Lawns are largely wasted in our society. When I visited Hungary a couple of decades ago, newly freed of Communism, every back yard had a garden, a chicken coop, as well as larger farm animals such as pigs and goats. Sadly, this level of self-sufficiency has probably diminished as their society has developed and moved to the Western model of centralized food production and distribution. Growing your own food means next to zero waste, and what clippings and husks and greens remain after the harvest are recycled into the compost bin or straight into the bed. If you have chickens, a lot of this material, such as tomato skins, carrot ends, etc., are eagerly devoured. In return for your generosity, the chickens provide high quality fertilization of your yard and garden, and as a bonus they eat insects including ticks.
blarg1 7y ago
Our chickens love all our food waste. And any chicken meat waste goes to the local magpies so they won't bomb us.
vturner 7y ago
Do these food waste statistics count what factories throw out? Recently, I met someone who works in quality control on a Kelloggs line. He told me that day they threw away 1,500 lbs of food on his line alone and that is a fairly common stat. I'm personally very conscientious of my food usage and throw little away, but the EPA telling the consumer this is their problem is irritating.
- d-sc 7y ago
  Percentages matter more than absolute amounts. I probably throw away 10-20% of what I buy. I suspect factories and you are better than that.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
> Keep a running list of meals and their ingredients that your household already enjoys. That way, you can easily choose, shop for and prepare meals. > Make your shopping list based on how many meals you’ll eat at home. Will you eat out this week? How often? > Plan your meals for the week before you go shopping and buy only the things needed for those meals. > Include quantities on your shopping list noting how many meals you’ll make with each item to avoid overbuying. For example: salad greens - enough for two lunches. > Look in your refrigerator and cupboards first to avoid buying food you already have, make a list each week of what needs to be used up and plan upcoming meals around it. > Buy only what you need and will use. Buying in bulk only saves money if you are able to use the food before it spoils. Great list. We keep a wiki page on our server that contains "menus" for the week along with the shopping list. We are able to rotate those every couple of months (ie: we have a couple months worth of menus that we rotate through) and it is just grab the list, check the pantry/fridge for what we have and get what we need from the store. Super easy. Recipes do get tired, so we do rotate those out and some new ones in, but the above is the general flow. We eat reasonably healthy. We can maximize our spend by looking for deals. We don't have to expend too much effort planning now.
foxhop 7y ago
I love when I tell people that I garden and they say things like "that's a nice hobby". Growing your own food is not a hobby, you are literally participating in the economy. It is great exercise and really helps you understand just how much labor and time goes into making food from seed to harvest to storage and consumption. I feel like there is a growing movement of more and more people trying to relearn these skills. As for food waste, the way I compost kitchen scraps is to dig a 1-2 foot deep by 1 foot wide hole in my yard where I dump a week's worth of scraps into. I chop it with my shovel and bury it while chopping. In 1-2 months time it will be completely taken in by the soil life. I use a 5 gallon bucket with a lid that seals in the kitchen to collect scraps. Each year I pick a new place to dig my holes. I keep the holes about a foot apart and I remove rocks as I go. They next year I plant a crop in the location. I like this method of composting because it enriches the land and the soil life does most of the work without any smell. I'm slightly tilling, preparing, enriching, and de-rocking(?) My land over the course of months. It takes about as much time as emptying the trash. You end up doing a lot of work, but it doesn't feel that way because you are "eating the elephant one bite at a time".
- 18pfsmt 7y ago
  As a renter I gardened for years, but I finally bought a condo and no longer have a yard. Early attempts at establishing a community garden program have been failures. I will continue the quest. However, I think you are overselling the idea, growing your own vegetables is not "part of the economy" even while it may have economic impact. You are not selling, correct?
  - surfmike 7y ago
    So if you sold it, then used that money to buy food, would it count?
    - foxhop 7y ago
      Thanks, this was what I was going to say. Anything you can do for yourself that _needs_ to be done, that you would have to pay for if you didn't do it, is participating in the economy.

160 points by adrian_mrd 7y ago

> Find out how to store fruits and vegetables so they stay fresh longer inside or outside your refrigerator. That was my first thought when I opened the website. I kind of expected to see the answer to this on the site, not a tip this general, or maybe a reference to look it up.

JeanMarcS 7y ago
Wouldn’t it be wiser to stop selling packs ? Like when you go to outdoor markets where you can buy 3 carrots if that’s what you only need. And it’ll stop all the plastic waste too. But I understand it will be a supply chain nightmare
- GordonS 7y ago
  Supermarkets sell loose fruit and veg too. Not for everything of course, but most of the more popular things (including carrots)
- timthorn 7y ago
  > But I understand it will be a supply chain nightmare I'm not sure why? It's standard practice in UK supermarkets, although prepacked bags are also available.
  - JeanMarcS 7y ago
    Yes and I think in many European countries to. I was referring for the US (or maybe the biaised vision I have of it)
  - bengale 7y ago
    There was an interesting BBC show the other day about plastic waste and they were pointing out that buying loose vegetables in major supermarkets was between 20-50% more expensive than buying them prepackaged.
    - fredsir 7y ago
      For the consumer or the seller? I think I easily save 20-50% when I buy the amount I can eat before it goes bad instead of having to buy a larger amount because it's prepackaged in a too-big-for-me package. Come to think of it, I never throw out stuff like fruit which I buy "per piece" instead of prepackaged, where as carrots which usually only comes prepackaged where I shop is something I often have to throw out of because the last ones have gone bad before I got to them. This have meant I rarely eat carrots anymore and instead buy something else that isn't prepackaged. Same thing with bread actually. But then they started selling smaller breads all over the country to combat food waste, and it really has, I don't remember throwing out bread in the last couple of years.
      - krsrhe 7y ago
        Have you tried eating more vegetables? It’s not hard for one person to eat 2lbs of carrots in the weeks before they go bad in a fridge.
        fredsir 7y ago
        I just don’t like that many carrots. Would prefer to be able to buy the couple I want. And yes, I do eat plenty of vegetables. I follow a whole-food plant-based diet and have done so for almost 7 years.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        For the consumer. I really doubt that the supermarket pays a different price by getting them in big boxes rather than plastic bags. If they do, it's probably less. :) Carrots and all root veg will easily keep for a couple of months or so if you store them in the fridge. Make sure they're completely dry, don't wash - they keep better - and remove any sprouting tops, then keep in an air tight box or bag, or as second best, just in the non-ventilated drawer of the fridge. Or about as long in sand if you have a cool dry cellar or garage to serve as makeshift root cellar. Store flat in plastic trays or tubs covered with dry horticultural sand or soil.
- kyriakos 7y ago
  That's probably a thing in some countries. Where I live you get to pick and buy as much as you want. There are no packs for fruit and vegetables. There are some exceptions like strawberries but even those are available to pick as well as packaged.
viraptor 7y ago
Also surprised the wasn't an answer. Here's mine: Putting vegetables in a wet canvas bag in the refrigerator keeps them fresh for much longer. This way you can store things for weeks which would otherwise spoil in days.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  Another way is to take them out every couple days and rinse thoroughly in water. Lettuce especially stays crisp this way.

mogadsheu 7y ago

The American food supply chain has a luxuriously high waste rate. It’s an issue that a few companies are trying to tackle, eg Imperfect Produce. Wasted food in the home though is mostly a cultural/price issue, as well as a misalignment issue between seller and consumer. Grocery stores try and increase AOV by selling you a 3lb bundle of carrots because they believe it to be profit maximizing to do so, at the cost of deadweight loss borne by the customer if they don’t eat all that they buy.

lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
I believe it to also be caused by the huge amount of subsidies American farmers receive from the US government, pretty much incentivizing them to grow and sell as much food as they possibly can.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
benj111 7y ago
Carrots seem like a poor example, they are literally meant to store over winter. Lettuce? Id struggle to eat 3lb of lettuce before it went off.
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  if we want to reduce waste switching to frozen instead of fresh would help. most wastage occurs on market shelves anyway. many foods are more nutritious when kept frozen until consumption. most even. but I have no answer for the aesthetics or texture.
  - benj111 7y ago
    Frozen lettuce?
    - galangalalgol 7y ago

m0zg 7y ago

I've found that the best way to reduce wasted food at home is by establishing and maintaining your food budget (groceries _and_ eating out), and gradually reducing it until you don't have any wasted food. People (myself included) get carried away buying stuff, even groceries. Without planning you will quite easily blow past your budget and then stuff will sit in your fridge and rot. Or another scenario: you buy a bunch of groceries and then eat fast food all week and throw most of your groceries away. Gotta use what you bought or it will go bad. It's very easy for a family of 3 in the US to spend $2K/mo on food and throw most of the groceries away. If you drive that down to $1K/mo, you can eat pretty well, and there won't be much wastage.

lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
I think part of the problem is, at least in my experience, buying stuff you tell yourself that you’ll eat but rarely do. If I were to be more honest with myself in a store, I’d cut down on food waste. My problem is I see certain things, and think to myself, oh I’ll eat those. But in reality, only ideally I’d eat those. What ends up happening is I get hungry and look into the fridge for something to eat, only to see that exact thing staring me right in the face before I say, damn nothing to eat. As well, going to the store more often. Buying only a couple or three days worth of groceries makes it easy to lower food waste. When I try to buy over a weeks worth of groceries I find myself having to throw away things more often.
- m0zg 7y ago
  There's an easy solution to the problem you describe: intermittent fasting once a week. You eat your dinner, and then eat nothing at all until the next dinner. Longer intervals are also possible, but I've found that for me 24 hours works the best. You won't believe how appetizing even the most unappealing items in your fridge will look after just one day of not eating anything, especially if you're physically active.
- fredsir 7y ago
  > As well, going to the store more often. Buying only a couple or three days worth of groceries makes it easy to lower food waste. When I try to buy over a weeks worth of groceries I find myself having to throw away things more often. Exact opposite is true for my family. If I meal plan and shop once a week, we eat everything because everything was bought for a specific purpose. If we are more loose with it, we buy too much, and end up throwing out stuff. Of course, you could meal plan for 2 days or 3 days and also go to the store that often, but that seems like a complete waste of time. Save for the occasional spontaneous idea, or for things that can't keep for a whole week, meal planning and shopping once a week have cut down our food-budget and waste significantly. Of course, learning to buy the right amounts for a whole week takes a while. A couple of weeks at least.

tobtoh 7y ago

If you don't have a garden (ie live in an apartment etc), is there any benefit (reduced methane?) to composting food scraps before throwing the soil in the trash/landfill?

my_username_is_ 7y ago
Not my area of expertise here, but I would think that doing so would help by reducing the overall volume of your waste. As food breaks down into soil, it packs tighter and reduces its overall volume. I assume that garbage trucks are limited by the volume that they can carry, not the weight, so reducing your waste volume should help reduce your overall carbon footprint by marginally reducing the number of vehicle-trips that it takes to collect your waste. That being said, I would have to think that reducing the amount of waste that you create in the first place will have a bigger impact than reducing the volume of a given mass of waste.
jvanvleet 7y ago
I really believe you know someone that could use the compost. I have three other families feeding mine.

amthewiz 7y ago

People go their entire lives without knowing what it is like to go without food for a day. They take it for granted. Also, I believe parents generally don't teach kids to respect food. It probably starts by letting a toddler feed him/herself too early and in the process normalizing food wastage. There is also a first world etiquette of leaving some food in the plate. I have seen people habitually do it.

rangibaby 7y ago
> There is also a first world etiquette of leaving some food in the plate. I have seen people habitually do it. I think it’s a status thing, to show that you are rich enough that you can just throw away food. You have probably heard or seen the horror stories about (rich) Chinese tourists and buffets when they visit overseas. OTOH My friend majorly pissed off our (normal for China) dinner host in southern China by putting food on his plate then not eating all of it. It’s the same in Japan, and Japanese buffets literally fine people for taking food and not eating it.
- benj111 7y ago
  "I think it’s a status thing" I'd say its a politeness/not appearing greedy thing, certainly from a food in the centre of the table point of view. Drives me mad when at the end on a dinner party you have one potato, one carrot stick, one chunk of bread. This is from a UK point of view, I understand there are different motivations elsewhere.
  - asark 7y ago
    Food portions and being (or acting) unable to finish all but the daintiest serving sizes definitely has a class component to it, at least in the US. I think this behavior's shifted "down" a notch or so, alongside fitness-as-a-class-marker (see also: athleisure wear) as the upper-middle and more perceptive anxious/striving middle classes have latched onto it. In tech circle's I'd guess it's very common, they consisting largely of those two class groups (using a Fussellian system of classification, here). Of course our meal serving sizes do probably vary more than in most (saner) countries. On the low end of the dining-out spectrum, one is often served enough food for two or more meals. There's an "if I don't feel stuffed to the point of nigh-immobility, I got ripped off" attitude in that sector of the market.

GordonS 7y ago

I find a good way to reduce food waste is to plan your meals a week in advance, so you do 1 big shop and get everything you need for the coming week. That way, you buy exactly what you need. You also know when you're going to need everything, so if there are any short-lived things (cut herbs, for example) that you need for a meal later in the week, you can get them just in time.

atoav 7y ago

I rarely ever throw food away, and if I have to (once every two months or so) I consider it a shame. Storing things the right way is important, but much more important is not buying too much. My solution is that I never use a shopping cart but my own bag. When you have to carry it you will have a much better feeling if it is too much. This is ofc harder if you have kids.

punjabisingh 7y ago
I'm using the same technique but at the checkout. Once my reusable bags fill up, I leave the rest. Also this technique helps in letting go of that packaged/junk food at the checkout.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  So instead of just not grabbing junk food, you leave it to make more work for the store employees? Unless you restock the shelves yourself, that is incredibly inconsiderate. Also, if an item is frozen, refridgerated, or fresh produce it likely ends up in the trash as spoilage, since a busy cashier won't have time to restock abandoned items.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Also, aren't items already scanned before they enter the bag? I don't understand how leaving the rest could actually play out unless the cashier had to then void each one.
spodek 7y ago
> harder if you have kids. Bea Johnson's family of four produces less than a mason jar of trash per year. https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroWasteHome https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroWasteHome Not speaking to atoav in particular, but it's tempting to make excuses why we don't do what others do that we want to but aren't. If we look for role models instead of excuses, we motivate ourselves to reach more of our potential. In her case, reducing the waste seems to have brought her family together more. It doesn't seem to be a burden, just a one-time shift.

Theodores 7y ago

This message is not a new one and it isn't really working. People kind of know - nobody walks into a supermarket to specifically buy stuff just to put in the rubbish bin, do they? I think there needs to be more radical solutions. For instance a sugar tax or a different tax band for microwave ready meals. We have all been there, after a hard week to have gone shopping to get the healthy veg and some ready prepared meal items, e.g. microwaveable or just a pizza that can be shoved in the oven. We get back tired from the shopping trip and don't make that salad, we put the pizza in the oven. The next day we do the same. Then the working week takes over and that once prime condition veg is not looking so good. We can't bring ourselves to throwing it out so we hold on to it until it is truly rotten. Meanwhile we have some other lazy beige foods. It is an easy trap to fall into and we have all been there. But what if that instant pizza cost as much as a restaurant pizza? Or that microwave meal cost the same as a pub meal? You would probably go for proper food. People could reduce food waste in the days before refrigeration, to not waste a thing. Ask anyone who is old enough to have known WW2. Rationing was a way of reducing waste, but, what else has changed? The junk food. This needs to be taxed so that people don't leave the good stuff to go rotten. Junk also needs to be taxed so poor people who view vitamins as a luxury don't eat it.

louismerlin 7y ago

A huge change in my food waste output took place when I stopped going to the supermarket, and instead started going to the local market once a week. Having to plan out what I needed for the week really changed my behavior for the better. (+ supporting local farmers + reducing plastic consumption)

wutbrodo 7y ago
How often would you go to the supermarket otherwise? My impression was that going once a week was the norm (I've never consistently done grocery so I dont know...)
- louismerlin 7y ago
  There is a supermarket between my university and my home, so it was extremely easy for me to hop in every 2 or 3 days.
Shivetya 7y ago
mine changed when I decided that since I passed the supermarket on the way home that I should only buy fresh foods I would consume from one day to the next. plus stopping daily meant I could more easily vary my eating
spodek 7y ago
A related change for me came when I joined a CSA http://joshuaspodek.com/farm-food-summer http://joshuaspodek.com/farm-food-summer and gave myself the rule to waste no food. Since I didn't choose what food I'd get and they design the shares for a family not just one person, it forced me to use new foods and learn what grew near me and barely go elsewhere. The experience taught me a lot about how to see plants (and fungi) and prepare them.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> Having to plan out what I needed for the week really changed my behavior for the better. Trying to plan for the week and shop for it on one day is the cause of most of our food waste, because we inevitably change plans (voluntarily or involuntarily). We are actually trying to be better about going to the store more frequently and buying less in advance. We are also trying to actually use things we stockpile in the pantry, since we also have a problem with stocking canned and dry goods we forget about.

agumonkey 7y ago

There's an app (I know) called toogoodtogo that let businesses to sale things that won't be allowed to be sold next day. It's a cute step in the right direction. ps: also, who made a kind of compost bin to at least avoid bagging organic material to go into the recycling system ?

lucb1e 7y ago
When I was in Finland for a few months, we used Resq Club for this. I loved it. Wasn't as cheap as one might expect of leftover food that would otherwise be thrown away, but it's still worth it. I think the operate also in other northern European countries.

ciconia 7y ago

In practically all developed countries, agriculture is wholly dependent on subsidies financed with taxes. The price of alimentary products in the supermarket does not reflect the true cost of production. This, coupled with countries like China subsidising exports, leads to a "race to the bottom" situation in which there's constant pressure to drive prices down. One way to reduce waste would be to stop subsidising agriculture on a global level. This might be also be accompanied by raising the price of fuel and electricity. Before screaming bloody murder and downvoting, please consider the following: - roughly 50% of food in the US goes to waste [1]. Meaning you already pay double what you think you pay. - About 40% of people in the US are obese [2]. We're eating too much. - Modern agriculture is an environmentally destructive practice [3]. Reducing food consumption can reduce its environmental impact. - We have all become used to abundance - in practically all domains of life: water, food, energy, travel, communication. We have become desensitised to the real value of things, we have no conception of the externalities involved in producing them, and pass our lives on an infinite binge of blind consumption. On a personal level, each of us can make the transition to consuming food in a more reasonable and sober manner. Finally, educating people about food waste is not enough. What's needed is rather a coordinated effort to move to a new model where people consume what they physically need, rather than indulging momentary craving. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/american-food-waste/491513/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/america... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190629233657/https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190629233657/https://www.cdc.g... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_agricu...

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
Add to what you said, we're eating too much sugar causing a health crisis no one's talking about (from eating sugar).
- electriclove 7y ago
  So true! The sugar addiction is real and I just don't know how to kick it. For me, it is twisted in with my caffeine addiction and I struggle trying to ward off potential withdrawal migraines with wanting to stop caffeine and also wanting to make it through life/work.

pard68 7y ago

We waste practically zero organic waste. We have chickens which eat our waste food, which is minimal in itself. What they don't eat becomes compost n about three months time. We eat the eggs, approximately ten a day, and use the compost to grow food in our yard most of the year. All of this is on a .25 acre of land in a downtown setting.

scruple 7y ago
I really want to get into a place where I can keep chickens and bees. I'd love to learn more about your set up, if you're willing to share.
- pard68 7y ago
  Sure! Our run is about 20'x30' with a 8'x4' coop in one corner. The perimeter of the run has a 6" post every 6' that stands 10' high. The top of all the posts are connected by a metal wire. On this wire we have plastic fencing (same gridded stuff that is used for construction, but dark green instead of construction orange) for the "roof" of the run. The sides are two types of fence. From ground to top is chicken wire fencing. This is strictly to discourage the hens from getting out. And the bottom 5' has very thick gauged wire fencing as well, which keeps predators out (though living in the downtown of a city that is just dogs really, and most dogs around us don't care because lots of people have chickens where we live). The compost system is setup so that there are four, 4'x4'x4' compost areas next to one another (constructed with pallets). Every three months we change which compost pile gets new material added to it. We mostly let the chickens do all the work of turning, and once a week we just go and throw everything back into the pile. It takes about 12 months for a pile to be ready to go, so we get a new 4'x4'x4' pile of compost every three months or so (I said 3 month turn around in my previous post, I was thinking of every three months we change piles, not ready compost every three months). Because we take so long to compost and because we have chickens that do much of the work of digesting, we compost everything we can. Normal stuff like vegetables and leaves, but also all our food, including bones and meat and sugars. There is a deer carcass in one of my piles right now, by the time we dug out that pile most of the bones will be dust, the skull will be pretty much the only thing left over. We never see any issues with bad germs in our compost because we let it cook so long and let the chickens eat the stuff that most people say not to compost (and birds have titanium stomachs). We use old and bad hay/straw from my wife's clients (she's a farrier and horse trainer) as the "browns" in the compost, which makes up the bulk of the matter in there.

alleskleber 7y ago

There's a tiny grocery store just a five minute walk away from my apartment. I treat it like an extended fridge. Whenever I need something it's just a short trip away. So there's no need to overstock food at home for me. But I get that not everybody has that opportunity.

yostrovs 7y ago
Stocking the fridge is not related to throwing away food. People that cook a great deal get a lot of benefit from having ingredients available.

deleted 7y ago

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bane 7y ago

We've managed to eliminate a ton of food waste (and cost) by simply not buying frozen or bulk foods. Paradoxically, whenever we buy food like this, it always comes in boxes that are much too large to use at once and inevitably will end up forgotten at the back of the freezer or pantry until we throw it out later. Now we buy maybe 2 or 3 days worth of food at a time and our fridge basically just has raw ingredients and a few condiments in it. Usually a package of never frozen meat (beef or chicken mostly) and a few fresh veggies and mushrooms for side dishes (many of them keep well or even better outside of the fridge). The most prepackaged thing we eat these days is on pasta night, and that's just for the sauce out of the jar and some premade noodles. The rest of the sauce is fresh chopped veggies and it makes a delightfully chunky sauce. A favorite side dish is mashed squash in lieu of mashed potatoes. It takes time to cook a nice meal, and if it's possible to get the time (it's not easy!) I think everybody should do it. The frozen and bulk foods never resulted in a meal half as good. One nice side effect, if we increase the portions a bit, we get a quality packed lunch from the left overs. Our meals also have dramatically increased the volume of fresh vegetables and are definitely much more healthy than anything we used to eat. Are we trying to reduce waste? Not really, just trying to cook and eat better, but the side effect is great (and much cheaper as well!) It's also a nice change in daily routine to stop at the grocery a couple times per week. Our fridge went from slam packed full to mostly empty and we eat far better.

agumonkey 7y ago
It has even been talked in mainstream news. Supermarkets tricks are made for you to buy more than necessary. A very sad side effect of short term capitalism thinking.
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
  Particularly if you live alone. Typically you can't buy fewer than 6 sausages in the UK, or in Germany finding anything less than a 2.5kg bag of potatoes can be tricky.
  - ncarroll 7y ago

m3kw9 7y ago

Costco is partly responsible

lucb1e 7y ago
That's an awfully short statement / quite a baseless comment. What does Costco even sell, are they a normal supermarket? Are other supermarkets not at fault? What does Costco do wrong compared to competitors (even if they are not alone, you seem to think them particularly responsible)?
- lkbm 7y ago
  Costco's thing is that they're bulk quantities at a lower price. They'll either have larger bottles/bags/cans, or they'll package 2+ of the regular ones together. At my local supermarket, I can buy a single onion if I'd like. If I want a them pre-bagged, it's a 3LBs bag. At Costco, the option is a 10LB bag. 5LBs bags of mozzarella. 5LB and 10LBs bags of carrots. It's a great place to shop, especially for large families/groups, but if you're a small household then it will lend towards over-buying, simply because you can't get a 1-2 person quantity of most things. This morning, I walked to the store and bought a single avocado. If I'd gone to Costco, I would've had to get a bag of five. (Which is surprisingly few for Costco.) Here's a product list for Costco: https://queenbeecoupons.com/costco-price-list/ https://queenbeecoupons.com/costco-price-list/ Compare the quantities with what I can get from my local supermarket: https://www.heb.com/ https://www.heb.com/

Merrill 7y ago

Buying frozen, rather than fresh, vegetables is a good way to avoid waste. They are processed and frozen soon after picking, so nutrients are well preserved. They are kept in large frozen food warehouses which are energy efficient. There is no reduction in nutrients during transport, distribution and retailing, compared with fresh produce which spends several days deteriorating in refrigerated trucks and warehouses before it gets to the store. And, frozen vegetables can be kept a long time once they're in your freezer, especially in a chest freezer without automatic defrost.

2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
Tinned goods are also great for a similar reason
- Merrill 7y ago
  Yes, especially for fruits that don't freeze well and for vegetables like crushed tomatoes, pickled beets, sauerkraut, etc. But one needs to watch the sodium and sugar content.
seanwilson 7y ago
It's always bugged me that frozen food gets demonised so much instead of people weighing up the objective pros and cons based on evidence. Same thing with microwave ovens, artificial sweeteners and MSG. Food science is difficult: this seems to create an environment where people make up, spread and strongly hold on to assertions that aren't evidence based.
- Merrill 7y ago
  From Mother Jones: "Chill Out: Frozen Foods Are Just Fine", https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/benefit-of-frozen-foods/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/benefit-of-f... TJ's frozen Brussels sprouts at 99 cents for 16 oz are a winner.
foxhop 7y ago
You can also by fresh in season for really cheap and then freeze yourself. It's not a hard skill to pick up and it def saves even more money.

wyldfire 7y ago

> Compost food scraps rather than throwing them away. I wonder: my neighborhood has some common area that I could ask that we set aside for composting. Have anyone on HN ever setup a neighborhood compost? Any tips/suggestions?

lucb1e 7y ago
In Germany, the municipality maintains those. Bio waste is picked up every two weeks or so. We have a large (5x5x13dm or so) container that we share with our upstairs neighbors and is mainly filled with mowed grass and kitchen waste, though I think we only fill it up once every month and a half, or maybe two months, and that's in summer when the grass grows. In fall, there are also solutions for fallen leaves, but I don't remember what (we've lived here less than a year, I vaguely remember reading it but I've yet to see it). In the Netherlands, they put collection baskets (of like 1x1x1m) on many streets in that season.

deleted 7y ago

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brahmwg 7y ago

Personally, I've reduced my food waste by eating almost primarily freeze-dried foods. They have a 30 year shelf life in most cases and just need a bit of hot water to be rehydrated, and it tastes just like fresh. The process of freeze-drying apparently keeps the nutritional value intact, as opposed to other preservation methods. It's great for planning meals for the week, and it's excellent for making delicious backpacking recipes! It seems in any given pack of fresh blueberries/strawberries/brocolli/whatever, inevitably some part of it gets moldy or subpar eating conditions. With the freeze dried equivalent, I know I have as-good-as-fresh ingredients that won't spoil anytime soon. I don't see myself ever buying fresh berries or brocolli or chicken ever again now that I've discovered freeze dried foods. It's just too efficient and convenient to have all these good quality foods on-demand that virtually never spoil. Edit: well actually I'd still buy fresh food... If I had my own freeze drier and freeze-dried them myself!

blisterpeanuts 7y ago

I'm surprised there's been no mention in the article or comments of gardening to grow one's own food. Gardening (generically encompassing both in-the-ground vegetable gardens and alternative growing methods such as greenhouse, hydroponics, and indoor grow stations in the basement etc.) inherently limits waste, encourages you to eat exactly as much as you grow, and allows sustainable replenishment of the soil, the atmosphere, and the general ecosystem. Of course, if you fill your yard with nothing but squash plants and harvest a ton of squash every fall, that's a bit of an extreme counter-example because you're not likely to eat that much squash, but even then you're going to give it away or sell it at the local farmer's market. But for the average food grower/amateur homesteader, you'll gradually develop a self-adapted menu of homegrown foods which you will be very pleased to consume as soon as they are ready, free of nasty chemicals and ripeness inhibitors, and full of nutrients that have not been lost in the production, transportation, and storage phases that commercial produce must necessarily undergo. You will eat locally grown produce that is adapted to your region, when and if it comes to maturity, and waste will not be your main concern, but rather the opposite -- if you have 12 potato plants, and they each produce 5-10 potatoes in August, you will accommodate the bounty by building a rack in the basement to store them over the winter -- literally a root cellar, which is what basements were originally for. Plus, it's fun, and vastly educational for children. Nothing is more satisfying than having your child help build the raised beds and plant the seeds, then seeing the seedlings come up and develop into mature plants that provide bounty for the dinner table. Experiencing the full cycle also encourages them to eat their vegetables. Raising egg chickens is also highly fulfilling and rewarding. Lawns are largely wasted in our society. When I visited Hungary a couple of decades ago, newly freed of Communism, every back yard had a garden, a chicken coop, as well as larger farm animals such as pigs and goats. Sadly, this level of self-sufficiency has probably diminished as their society has developed and moved to the Western model of centralized food production and distribution. Growing your own food means next to zero waste, and what clippings and husks and greens remain after the harvest are recycled into the compost bin or straight into the bed. If you have chickens, a lot of this material, such as tomato skins, carrot ends, etc., are eagerly devoured. In return for your generosity, the chickens provide high quality fertilization of your yard and garden, and as a bonus they eat insects including ticks.

blarg1 7y ago

Our chickens love all our food waste. And any chicken meat waste goes to the local magpies so they won't bomb us.

vturner 7y ago

Do these food waste statistics count what factories throw out? Recently, I met someone who works in quality control on a Kelloggs line. He told me that day they threw away 1,500 lbs of food on his line alone and that is a fairly common stat. I'm personally very conscientious of my food usage and throw little away, but the EPA telling the consumer this is their problem is irritating.

d-sc 7y ago
Percentages matter more than absolute amounts. I probably throw away 10-20% of what I buy. I suspect factories and you are better than that.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

> Keep a running list of meals and their ingredients that your household already enjoys. That way, you can easily choose, shop for and prepare meals. > Make your shopping list based on how many meals you’ll eat at home. Will you eat out this week? How often? > Plan your meals for the week before you go shopping and buy only the things needed for those meals. > Include quantities on your shopping list noting how many meals you’ll make with each item to avoid overbuying. For example: salad greens - enough for two lunches. > Look in your refrigerator and cupboards first to avoid buying food you already have, make a list each week of what needs to be used up and plan upcoming meals around it. > Buy only what you need and will use. Buying in bulk only saves money if you are able to use the food before it spoils. Great list. We keep a wiki page on our server that contains "menus" for the week along with the shopping list. We are able to rotate those every couple of months (ie: we have a couple months worth of menus that we rotate through) and it is just grab the list, check the pantry/fridge for what we have and get what we need from the store. Super easy. Recipes do get tired, so we do rotate those out and some new ones in, but the above is the general flow. We eat reasonably healthy. We can maximize our spend by looking for deals. We don't have to expend too much effort planning now.

foxhop 7y ago

I love when I tell people that I garden and they say things like "that's a nice hobby". Growing your own food is not a hobby, you are literally participating in the economy. It is great exercise and really helps you understand just how much labor and time goes into making food from seed to harvest to storage and consumption. I feel like there is a growing movement of more and more people trying to relearn these skills. As for food waste, the way I compost kitchen scraps is to dig a 1-2 foot deep by 1 foot wide hole in my yard where I dump a week's worth of scraps into. I chop it with my shovel and bury it while chopping. In 1-2 months time it will be completely taken in by the soil life. I use a 5 gallon bucket with a lid that seals in the kitchen to collect scraps. Each year I pick a new place to dig my holes. I keep the holes about a foot apart and I remove rocks as I go. They next year I plant a crop in the location. I like this method of composting because it enriches the land and the soil life does most of the work without any smell. I'm slightly tilling, preparing, enriching, and de-rocking(?) My land over the course of months. It takes about as much time as emptying the trash. You end up doing a lot of work, but it doesn't feel that way because you are "eating the elephant one bite at a time".

18pfsmt 7y ago
As a renter I gardened for years, but I finally bought a condo and no longer have a yard. Early attempts at establishing a community garden program have been failures. I will continue the quest. However, I think you are overselling the idea, growing your own vegetables is not "part of the economy" even while it may have economic impact. You are not selling, correct?
- surfmike 7y ago
  So if you sold it, then used that money to buy food, would it count?
  - foxhop 7y ago
    Thanks, this was what I was going to say. Anything you can do for yourself that _needs_ to be done, that you would have to pay for if you didn't do it, is participating in the economy.