10 Ways to Reduce Food Waste (Without Changing What You Eat or Where You Shop)
Ok, so, it’s officially #plasticfreejuly and you’re probably seeing like, waaaay more eco- conscious content on social media right now. Maybe this is really inspiring and motivating for you, or... maybe it feels more overwhelming and prohibitively expensive.
WELL. Do I have a post for whichever side you find yourself on! See, I’m not just MiLowe Kids’ resident homeschooler, I’ve also spent the past six-ish years really intentionally working to reduce my family’s waste, for both financial and environmental reasons. See, before I was a broke, self employed single mom, I was an even broker SAHM who’s only way of contributing financially was more often than not reducing the money going OUT vs increasing the money coming in. As someone who just does not do things halfway, I’d like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
BUT we can’t have a post about reducing waste without addressing that MANY, if not most, popular eco-alternatives require an upfront investment that’s out of reach for a lot of us. So, this isn’t a post about things in your house to replace, it’s a post that I wholeheartedly believe can help ANY family make their kitchen more sustainable AND affordable by minimizing an issue that a lot of us don’t really think about: food waste.
Depending on where you find your statistics (and whether they’re talking about industrial or household food waste), you may have read that anywhere from 20-40% of food in the US goes to waste. Which is, a horrible, overwhelming, unsolvable thing to think about on a national scale but let’s narrow it down to an individual level and make it personal and maybe a little selfish. So consider this: what kind of difference would it make in your grocery budget, schedule, and peace of mind if you weren’t literally throwing away 20-40% of your groceries?
Now, what if I told you that you can absolutely totally do this without changing what you eat, where or how often you shop, and exactly NONE of these solutions are coupons, complicated meal plans, or weird money saving things that only seem to work in the midwest (nothing against the midwest just I live in LA I’ve just never seen markdowns here like I see on the internet). In fact, these are all methods that I’ve personally used to drastically reduce our food waste (and by extension, grocery budget), EVEN WITH having a food allergy kid and pretty much only shopping at Sprouts.
And I’m being totally serious about this and not exaggerating at all. JUST being more conscious about HOW you shop can have a much bigger impact on how much food you throw away than WHAT you buy or WHERE, and just has, so many benefits.
Ok so what do I mean by “food waste”? Honestly I’m using this term as a catch all to lump together three distinct types of waste that I noticed in my own household:
1. Food that goes bad before I get a chance to cook it
2. Food that gets cooked but not all of it gets eaten.
3. Food that just hangs out in the pantry or freezer forever and ever.
Yeah, I know, you probably never even thought of that last one as a form of food waste before, but think about it: that’s time, labor, resources and money just... not getting used. So I’m counting it as waste.
So here’s the list of techniques that I, personally have used. Meaning, these are all totally easy things that you can apply to your own meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking routines. And before I get into it I want to remind you that you absolutely 100% DO NOT HAVE to do all of them, and certainly not all at the same time. I’m a firm believer that the only truly sustainable (heh) path to sustainability is to take changes one at a time so that they become unconscious habit.
ANYWAY, heres the list:
ONLY SHOP FOR THE DAYS YOU’LL EAT AT HOME.
Regardless of how many days you’re shopping for: two days, a week, a month, take time to consider how much of that time you’ll actually be eating at home before shopping. For example, let’s say you’re shopping for a week, but you know in advance that you have a birthday party one night and a date on another. Now you’re only shopping for five dinners instead of seven. If you know that you’re going away for the weekend, for the love of all that is good and holy do not count those days in your grocery list!
WATCH WHAT YOUR FAMILY ACTUALLY EATS.
Look, I’m not going to judge what your family does or doesn’t eat. If your kids eat a lot of cereal, then by all means, buy a lot of cereal. But, like, if every time you make soup (true story from my house), everyone complains and no one eats the leftovers, maybe take a break from making soups.
BE REALISTIC.
Ok so the one thing that I will tell everyone on earth not to buy are what I call “aspirational vegetables”. You know, when you’re at the store and say to yourself “I’m going to buy this bag of spinach so I can have salads for lunch” knowing full well that you are, in fact, not going to make salads for lunch but rather throw away an unopened bag of slimy decomposing spinach (another true story from my house)? Yeah... don’t do that.
USE WHAT WILL GO BAD FIRST, FIRST.
Imagine this scenario: you bought apples and raspberries to go in your kids’ lunches. Now we all know that raspberries last until about six hours after you get home but apples can last for weeks if it’s not too hot. So eat the raspberries first before they go bad, and save the apples for later in the week because they’ll still be edible. Also I do not know WHY it is but produce lasts a LOT longer if you don’t wash it until you eat it?
THINK PIECES, NOT POUNDS FOR PRODUCE.
Produce is usually sold by the pound, so when we go to buy it we tend to think about how much we’ll need in pounds. Like, “Cool peaches are $1 a pound this week I’ll get 3 pounds” even though we have no idea how much peaches 3 pounds is and it turns out that is more peaches than we can eat in the time it takes for peaches to go bad and we throw half of them away. By changing the narrative to “I can probably eat 4 peaches this week” and then buying four peaches even if it’s some weird weight like 1.47 pounds, you can solve this entire problem.
USE WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE.
Have you ever come home from the grocery store only to find that theres no room to put the groceries you bought away because your fridge and pantry were already pretty full? What if you just... paused shopping for a bit and focused on using that stuff up before you bought more? It’s like free groceries! Usually after holidays I’ll challenge myself to see how long I can go without buying more than like, milk, veggies, and eggs and well... sometimes I can go a WHILE.
AVOID THE TEMPTATION TO “STOCK UP”
And while we’re at it, maybe remove the words “extra” and “just in case” from our vocabularies? The point of buying food is so we can eat it, not just have it until some unknown future time that may not even happen.
MEAL PLAN BACKWARDS.
This one was a game changer for me: instead of picking the meals you want to eat for the week and buying all the ingredients, check and see what you already have and make your meal plans utilizing that existing food as much as possible. Already have two dinners in the freezer? Cool, two less days to cook! You have pasta, frozen chicken, and a ton of salad ingredients? Base your next meal ideas around using those up! Yes it feels weird at first but honestly once you get used to it it makes planning and shopping both easier AND less wasteful.
BE STRATEGIC WITH LEFTOVERS.
Some families LOVE leftovers, but in all honesty, mine really does not. So I’ve learned to do things like: make smaller quantities of some foods so they all get eaten at once, repurpose leftovers so they’re not the same thing (example: leftover taco meat on nachos later in the week), or batch cooking and freezing in one-meal portions (this is great for beans, soups and curries).
USE YOUR SCRAPS.
Ok maybe this one goes out a little into the “ain’t nobody got time for that” territory BUT veggie scrap stock and apple cider vinegar ARE great options if you want to get a little extra out of your food waste. I hope that somewhere in here you’ve found something new or helpful, it’s a long time goal of mine to make sustainable living both easy and accessible. And if you have any tips of your own that I didn’t mention, please share them in the comments so we can all learn from each other!
-Victoria AKA “Homegrown Homeschooler”
