Food waste

[FindMeInTheSunshine]

Please tell me about your food waste!

Our local council are trialling food waste bins, which I'm pleased about, although I'm not on the trial. I've seen someone posting on Facebook that they had weighed their food waste for the week and it came to 5kg. FIVE! I've not weighed ours, but for two people I'd be surprised if it came to 0.5kg. We cook most things from scratch, but once or twice a week we'll have ready meals or a takeaway or similar, like a bought jar of pasta or curry sauce rather than making it. I guess not having children in the house means we don't do something like cook a load of pasta and throw out what's uneaten. I really don't mean this to be virtue signalling or to make anyone feel guilty, but I'm honestly at a loss to know how one family can create so much food waste. Would anyone be willing to give be an estimate of how much they have and what is in it, just to satisfy my curiosity?

[dementedpixie]

Leftover bread, potatoes (we never eat them all before they start sprouting), peelings, tea bags, egg shells, food leftovers. Ours is only collected every 2 weeks

[BecomeStronger]

I think all these scemes whilst well meaning have missed the point. Recycling might be better then landfil but it would be better not to use so much in the first place and it's the same with food waste, far better to educate ourselves and supermarkets not to have so much waste. Theres no earthly reason yogurts and eggs, for example have such short best before dates or that many jars need to be "used within 6 weeks of opening".

However DS1 is a very fussy and unpredictable in his appetite so I'm afraid his leftovers end up in the bin more than they should.

We never throw out food other than leftovers from a plate though. I meal plan and shop for and cook what we need. If there are edible leftovers, I take them to work for lunch next day. I'm not beyond talking the half eaten salmon fillet or chicken breast from DS1's plate and making a sandwich or salad with it for next day, although I do draw the line at a shepherd's pie or curry from his plate that he's been "into" iyswim.

[BasiliskStare]

All leftovers in this house get wrapped up and put into the fridge for lunch tomorrow & if things are consistently not eaten - don't get bought again. Other stuff including potatoes ( leftovers from plates ) etc are mixed in dried food for dogs.

There are times when bread goes mouldy so has to be binned - apart from that I would say less than half a small bag in a fortnight ( not sure what that is in kg. )

[dementedpixie]

I dont have a dog so have nothing to eat leftovers

[BecomeStronger]

@dementedpixie

Leftover bread, potatoes (we never eat them all before they start sprouting), peelings, tea bags, egg shells, food leftovers. Ours is only collected every 2 weeks

Sprouting potatoes are perfectly edible.

[StillWeRise]

our food waste-
left overs either eaten the next day or frozen for a future lunch
peelings, tea leaves etc- compost
other leftovers (eg plate scrapings, amounts too small to be useful)- eaten by chickens
there was a guy on the radio the other day saying that food waste is a significant climate crisis issue, because in landfill it creates methane.

[BasiliskStare]

@BecomeStronger - ha ha - I am the mistrsss of cutting bits off potato so they can be used in e.g. a spanish omelette , mashed potatoes layered baked potatoes etc

No - one has been poisoned in this family yet - ha ha

[Georgyporky]

5 kg ? Must be a large family who eat chops for every dinner.

[BecomeStronger]

@Georgyporky

5 kg ? Must be a large family who eat chops for every dinner.

I think most food waste is stuff that's over bought and never makes it to a plate before going in the bin, not leftovers from plates.

[BasiliskStare]

@BecomeStronger - I agree ( apart from scraps for dogs on the occasions we have them )

[tywysoges]

I’ve never weighed my bin, but normally have 2-3 bags in the food caddy on collection day. I have a small (6 litres I think?) caddy in the kitchen and I change it halfway between collections whether it’s full or not, because the bag starts breaking if left too long. My rubbish is mostly fruit and veg peels, fruit stones/cores, egg shells and tea bags, and the odd leftover that is too little to be eaten the next day. We also cook from scratch, I go through a lot of onions - 2 adults, 1 older child and 2 cats.

[DelphiniumBlue]

I try really hard to avoid waste, but even though I meal plan, find that there's rotting veg or leftovers at the end of the week.
I do put leftovers in the fridge for tomorrows lunch, or if it's a wjhole mealks wroth, in the freezer, but there always seems to be a container in the fridge of something that's just gone off. Life isn't predictable, so if someone is out at a mealtime unexpectedly, or not hungry, or I don't feel like cooking so we have cheese on toast instead of a proper cooked meal, then things do sometimes get left.
Or no one eats the fruit/raw veg I bpught to persuade them to eat more healthily!
4 adults here. It is annoying, and I feel as if I am the only person in the house who makes the effort, so I eat a lot of leftovers!

[UtterlyUnimaginativeUsername]

We feed all ours to the chickens and they magically turn it into eggs, all of which get used. Chickens are awesome We wouldn't have 5kg a week though. It's generally just unusable plate scrapings and lunchboxes leftovers.

[dementedma]

Lots of leftovers go into soup, or are taken into work for lunches next day. Bananas go into banana bread, stale bread into breadcrumbs.
Fruit goes into crumbles or cakes.
We do have teabags and coffee grounds, eggshells, uneaten cat food, and plate scrapings but not a huge amount

[Whathappenedtothelego]

We don't have much food waste- it is mainly fruit and vegetable peelings, apple cores, tea bags, coffee grounds, chicken bones. The odd end of mouldy bread or burnt bit of toast.
The last bits of veg that have been forgotten and gone bad - usually cherry tomatoes (they often seem to get covered in white fur really quickly).

[InTheLongGrass]

I dont know how much it weighs, but we generally empty the compost bin every other day - I'd guess a litre a day.
Apple cores, orange peel, banana skins, grape stalks, onion skin, carrot and potato peelings, egg shells, pepper cores, cucumber ends, tea bags.

In the bin goes not much food - bone, odd bit of bread, scrapings from the plates.

[minnie465]

Pretty similar to @tywysoges. You'd be surprised how quickly the small caddy bin fills up! we have little food waste as we meal plan. But banana skins, onion peel, coffee grounds, egg shells, all the peelings after prepping a roast on Sunday and such quickly build quite a bit of unavoidable waste.
We've had the food waste bins here in Northern Ireland for years.

[AtleastitsnotMonday]

Ours is mostly fruit and veg peelings, banana and melon skins (which really add to the weight!) egg shells and lots of tea bags!

[FindMeInTheSunshine]

I realise I'm now overinvested in working out how many grams a used tea bag weighs. I also know I'm lucky to have a husband who generally eats any leftovers as a snack the next day, and eats the apple cores.

[StillWeRise]

I've just remembered when I was a kid, there was a family where the mum would give all the family and apple each (say if they were out or something) and then she would eat all the cores! Not sure why, I don't think they were hard up.