Hi Green Junkie!
In today’s episode I am talking about how you can throw away less food because we have all wasted food and dumped it in the trash, right?
Whether it’s buying more than we consume, or just lack of planning, or really just not knowing the best ways to shop to reduce waste, it all adds up to unnecessary waste.
Living with less food in your trash doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Trust me. I’m going to share some super simple and unique tips to help you waste less and save money in the process.
In this episode I will touch on:
- Staggering stats about food waste in North America
- How to reduce the amount of food you waste
- What you should do BEFORE you go grocery shopping
- Easy tips to use every bit of your good
- How to use re-grow your veggies
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Thanks for listening and being here.
Your green bestie,
xoxo Stephanie
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Resources mentioned in this episode
https://lovefoodhatewaste.ca/about/food-waste/
https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/
LISTEN BELOW
TRANSCRIPT FOR EPISODE 3
0:00 Hey, Green Junkie, I'm your host, Stephanie Moram and today we're going to be talking about food waste, and all the things that you can do to help reduce the amount of food that ends up in your trash.
0:13 We have all wasted food at some point in our life, right? We've all thrown something in the trash at some point. But did you know that Canadians waste 35 point 5 billion kilos of food, which is equivalent to 80 billion pounds of food every year. And that's also true for the United States. So just two countries are wasting and throwing in the trash 160 billion pounds of food, which is 70 billion kilos of food. That's a lot of food that's ending up in our trash.
0:59 The sad part is that a lot of the food that is actually ending up in our trash is edible. It is completely fine. So consumers are throwing out a lot of food. And a lot of grocery stores and restaurants are throwing out a lot of food that is still good.
1:21 So what is it that you as a consumer can do to reduce your waste to reduce the amount of food that you are putting in the trash every day?
1:32 Let's talk about my first big tip. Only buy what you need.
1:40 When you're grocery shopping, don't buy 10 cucumbers, if you only need five. We do that right? We often have these big goals of I'm going to eat 10 cucumbers this week, I'm going to eat all these fruits and veggies but we actually don't and then guess what happens? By the end of the week, the cucumber is all moldy, the carrots don't look awesome and they end up in the trash or the compost. That's great that we're composting the food but if we would have eaten it, we could have just avoided it getting to the compost at all.
2:21 So really, really be mindful of buying only what you need when it comes to food. I think that's where a lot of the waste happens is we think we're going to eat all this food, but we actually don't.
2:36 You could also create a meal plan every week, you know, kind of just list out the things that the meals that you're going to have that week require. That can really reduce the amount of food that you're going to waste.
2:52 This leads me to my next tip, which is to shop your cupboards and shop your fridge. Clean it out. Before you go grocery shopping, have a little bit of a meal plan, have an idea of the meals you're going to eat that week, and then look in your fridge.
3:10 Oh, I have two cucumbers. Okay, I need to eat those. I have some lettuce, I need to eat that. Oh look, I have some pasta noodles. I have this, I have that.
3:17 Not only are you going to reduce the amount of food that you waste, but you're also going to save some money because technically when you're throwing those cucumbers out, you've just thrown out money at the same time because you're not consuming it and now you're going to go out and buy new cucumbers to replace the cucumbers that you didn't eat. So really look in your fridge at what you already have before you go buy new food. When it comes to meat when it comes to your veggies when it comes to dry foods, whatever it is, shop your fridge and your cupboards.
3:52 Next up is restaurants. Let's say you're going out to a restaurant. And let's be honest, most restaurants give us way too much food is for one person, but that spaghetti you ordered – about four people could probably eat it. So before it ends up in the trash, maybe grab a to go bag to bring it home and then now you have a meal for the next day or two. You can one up that by bringing your own container with you. I always have a stainless steel container with me when I go out to a restaurant, just in case my kids don't eat all their food, which usually always happens, or even myself and then I bring it home and now I have another meal. So right there I am reducing what's going to end up in the trash because most restaurants are not composting and the food will end up in the garbage. They're not keeping it.
4:56 So what are some small things outside of only buying what you need, cleaning out your fridge and taking home leftovers? Well I got a couple of creative ways that you can reduce what you put in the compost and your trash.
5:18 The first thing is when it comes to your fruits and veggies- can you put some of that stuff in the freezer? So what I do is when I have strawberries, I cut off the ends of the strawberries. Most people trash it, but I put mine in the freezer. So I have a huge bag of the ends of strawberries in my freezer to add to smoothies. So it's kind of a little bonus, I got a little bit of extra strawberry in my smoothie and I got some greens from the ends.
5:47 Are there other things that you can throw in the freezer? For example – cantaloupe. Let's talk about other veggies. So you have raspberries and you didn't finish all the raspberries that you bought or you didn't finish all the cantaloupe that you bought. Well, instead of trashing it, put it in the freezer, and this way, you can add them to smoothies or whatever else you want to do with it.
6:09 Same thing for bananas, freeze those suckers, make banana bread with it, make smoothies with it, but don't throw it in the trash – it's completely edible food. So just be a little bit more mindful of when you do buy something and if it's on its last legs, you can freeze it. Veggies and fruit freeze so well.
6:32 Then be creative. After making a smoothie make some banana bread. When it comes to veggies, make a veggie broth. So take the ends of the carrots, the celery, your onions. And if you're not ready to make your veggie broth right away, have a bag in your freezer where you put all the ends of your veggies. So then when you have enough when you've accumulated enough, then you can make your veggie broth. And this way, you're saving all those veggie scraps from ending up in the trash or in the compost.
7:09 Another thing you can do, is to regrow your veggies. So you can take some celery, cut up your celery, but keep the bottom of it. And then what you're going to do is you're going to get some sort of bowl and you are going to put the celery in the bowl and roots are going to start to grow. And once those roots start growing, then you can plant it in some dirt. And that way now you're taking the end of your celery and you're growing it into new celery.
7:39 You can do it with potatoes, you can do it with onions, you can google all over the internet of the different veggies that you can regrow. And this way you're saving money because you're not buying over and over the same veggies and you're also saving that scrap from ending up in the trash.
8:02 You're going to hear me talking about this a lot throughout probably most of the podcast episodes, and that is buying in bulk. When you buy in bulk. You're only buying what you need and that goes back to my very very first tip, “only buy what you need.”
8:14 So if you need chia seeds, but you don't need a whole bag of chia seeds, buy the chia seeds in bulk. That way you're only buying what you need. Get a glass container that you have at home, bring it with you to the grocery store, and only buy the amount of chia seeds that you actually need. Do the same for hemp seeds, the nuts, the seeds, the whatever it is you can find. It depends on the on the store that you go to, but mine personally has a great array of foods. By buying in bulk, it also allows you to buy less so you're wasting less at this point.
8:55 Another way to reduce your food waste is to offer it to people. So let's say you made too much soup. You made a potato leek soup and it was awesome and you just know that you're probably not going to get around to consuming all of it and that's totally fine. But before it ends up in the garbage or down your sink or down your toilet, maybe your neighbors want it. You can also go to a Facebook group that's local to you and see if there's anybody that would like some soup, some fresh organic potato leek soup and if for whatever reason you're not comfortable giving away your soup, you can always freeze it.
9:42 I feel like this is something I'm repeating over and over again. But freeze your food and your leftovers.
9:49 I mean I understand certain foods you might not want to freeze, like that day old spaghetti might not taste so great frozen, but you can totally freeze up potato leek soup that you made.
10:03 So now that you have all these awesome ideas on how you can reduce the amount of food that ends up in your trash, I encourage you to do one thing today to live a little more in green around food waste. What is it that you can do today to reduce your waste? Are you going to freeze your strawberry ends? Are you going to go grocery shopping and be more mindful of the things that you're buying and only buy what you need – whatever it is do one thing today.
10:35 With that said, I would love for you to head over to my Patreon page, where you can become a green junkie fan for only $5 you get ad free episodes and the privilege of wearing the green junkie badge of honor you can head over to my Patreon info is in my show notes.
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