5 simple ways to reduce your food waste at home

This is what 74 kg of food might look like:

Can you believe that this is the amount of food an average person wastes per year? That’s really a lot, right?

Taking simple steps to reduce your food waste will have a positive impact on the environment.

Global food waste creates many problems:

• Monetary loss

• Wastage of resources and energy

• Increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

You can introduce 5 simple changes to your daily habits to reduce food waste. 

Get ready before you head to the supermarket:

• Have a bite to eat first. Shopping while hungry will make you buy more than you need.

• Make a meal plan for the coming days.

• Check your pantry to know what you already have.

• Write down the missing ingredients.

• Stick to the grocery list while shopping.

To get a good overview of what should be used first, make sure to put:

• Products with the further use-by date in the back

• Products with the soonest use-by date in the front

You've made too much food and can't finish it? It happens to even the best planners!

• Check if a product or dish can be frozen.

• Freeze it either before its use-by date (for products) or on the day you made it (for dishes).

• Put a label with the date on it.

• Enjoy it later!

Get more useful tips on what foods you can freeze safely by visiting this link.

💡Cook with food scraps!

With a pinch of creativity and a handful of spices, you can turn many food scraps like potato peels, broccoli stalks, or carrot leaves and tops into exciting dishes.

Get started by trying out some fun recipes using food scraps.

💡Compost your food scraps!

You can eithercompost at home or send it to your local waste management center for community composting.

To learn more about composting visit this website.

💡Grow plants from scraps!

Check this website to get gardening tips on growing food scraps.

Products that you buy in a store have either a best before or a use-by date. They're not the same thing!

Use by date

• The product is safe to eat up to this date.

• After this date, you shouldn't eat it, even if it looks okay.

• It's often used for meat, fish and dairy-based products.

Best before date

• The product is still safe to eat past this date.

• It might not be at its best quality.

• You should use your senses to judge if it's okay to eat it.

⚡Time to test your knowledge!

It's the 12th of March 2023 and Anna is grabbing a pack of ground beef from the fridge to make dinner. On the label, it says: "Use by 10/03/2023". She opens it and it looks and smells perfectly fine.

You can play a part in helping to reduce the global food waste problem.

Use this Byte to help make a difference today!