When food is wasted, it not only causes a financial loss, but there is also waste all the water, energy, labour, packaging and other resources that went into producing the food.
In Australia, it is estimated that $36 billion of food is wasted each year and, households are the single greatest source of this waste. Council’s review of waste in our red bins shows, on average, households in the Lithgow Local Government Area are throwing away more than 3kgs of food in their red bin each week. This adds up to over 160kgs of food being wasted in the red bin from each household, each year.
Wasting food harms the environment, too. Food that is put into the red bin ends up in landfill where it is compacted and buried. In landfill, oxygen is not available for the natural composting process to take place so food rots slowly and emits methane gas. Methane gas is a greenhouse gas that has a warming effect some 25 times greater than carbon dioxide.
The good news is that simple steps have been shown to make a big difference to household food waste.
The main causes of such wastage are buying too much, cooking too much, not storing food correctly and just not using food up. Here’s five actions to reduce food waste:
- Check what you have got before you shop and make a list of what you need,
- Only purchase items on your list, in the quantities that you need,
- Store food carefully,
- Plan to use fresh food first and any leftovers at the next meal, and
- Make a ‘use it first’ spot in your fridge and pantry so everyone can find the food that needs to be consumed fast.
No one wants to waste food but households may be wasting more than they think so try some simple steps to reduce food wastage, save money and help the environment.