to be shocked that 70% of food waste is from our homes? Do people not eat leftovers?

[MLMshouldbeillegal]

ahdb.org.uk/news/consumer-insight-positive-movements-in-uk-food-waste-reduction-reverse-as-covid-19-restrictions-are-removed

71% of food waste - 4.5 MILLION TONNES - annually is from our homes. Retailer and restaurants get stick in the press for throwing things away but really, they're not the problem, are they? Only 4% of food waste is produced by reailers.

It's us who are being wasteful. Throwing away 4.5 million tonnes of food each year is obscene. Do people not eat leftovers? Freeze what they're not using and keep it another day?

@LucentBlade

It’s incredibly unusual for food to get wasted in this house. Both brought up by parents who lived through rationing in WWII so was seen as pretty sinful.

I often make Sunday soup so all veg that needs using gets chucked in, a bit like a medieval potage.

I do this, it's known as The Bottom Of The Fridge Soup. The dcs really like it, esp with crusty rolls.

Apologies @ZZTopGuitarSolo.
The first part of my post was directed at you personally, to ask about your interesting sounding bags.

The second part was just my general musings, directed to all posters.
I wasn't pulling you up for not doing as I do, though, I can see it may have read that way.

"Trader Joes" sounds American to me so, in the spirit of saving the planet, I'd better not board a flight from UK to come shopping for your mesh bags, much as I like the sound of them

@KrispyKale

Next you'll tell me they count the stiff we put on our compost heap..

Way more interesting. How do you bend the legs to fit in? :o

I don't have food waste - I have dust bin dogs!

I struggle with this. Theoretically I would like to make better use of leftovers, but I'm not very good at it. I try to cook just what we need instead but of course that doesn't always work out.

Also, not all of our waste is leftovers. I was cleaning out my fridge today and there was a lot of things I bought, mainly for my kids, which they just didn't eat. Yogurt for example. I think what happens here is I want them to eat these things, but when push comes to shove they choose something else.

We've become used to so much choice, sometimes my sense is we will buy all these different products but really, people mostly want the same few things.

wizened woolly apples make great apple cake.

What does this mean? "Wooly" as a description of an apple can only mean rotten and moldy, surely? 🤮

infact out of nearly 40 flats we have one recycling bin

What do you mean, one normal wheelie bin for 40 households?! That seems implausible and would result in much recyclable marerial going to landfill.

I've recently discovered the Olio app. I try to order less but on the occasions that I do it's been amazing to reduce waste. People are so friendly and appreciative on it as well.

Very little gets thrown out here, mainly peels and crusts. I mainly buy frozen veg including onions so only use what's needed. When I bring my shopping home, I immediately freeze half the fresh & dairy to reduce waste. Half the loaf, yogurts, cheese and milk are frozen for another day. This has helped to significantly reduce the food waste as less is going off. Once I run out, I defrost what I stored in the freezer.

Most of my food waste is fruit from the supermarket which seems to go from rock hard to over ripe and mushy in a matter of hours. The other day I had a bag of oranges which still had 4 days left before sell by date, but half of them had squashy/ mouldy patches. I do think part of the issue is quality control from supermarkets, even if they're not throwing it out themselves.

In our family the next biggest contributor would be my kids only eating half a portion, but I can't just give them half a portion because sometimes they eat more. Also my husband over estimating when cooking rice or pasta and then throwing away a small amount of cooked pasta.

I've found fresh fruits and vegetables from Aldi and Lidl go off really quickly. I don't buy from there anymore as I buy fresh produce from other shops instead.

@TowerOfGiraffes

infact out of nearly 40 flats we have one recycling bin

What do you mean, one normal wheelie bin for 40 households?! That seems implausible and would result in much recyclable marerial going to landfill.

It's the same where I live we have 40 flats all with family's of 3+ the council have supplied 4 of those big black bins and one green. The recycling fills up really fast and as the bins are collected on alternate weeks often the things in the recycling are wet as people have tried to balance them on the top which means they cannot be recycled and probably all goes to landfill in the end.

Woolly doesn't mean rotten or mouldy. It just means the apple is a bit beyond its perfect state and the texture has changed to a softer state, so they are not the best for eating but perfectly fine for cooking with. Can also be described as a 'bit pappy'.

@TowerOfGiraffes

wizened woolly apples make great apple cake.

What does this mean? "Wooly" as a description of an apple can only mean rotten and moldy, surely? 🤮

I understand this, and no not mouldy - at the end of the week, if I have any apples left that are starting to get wrinkly, then I chop them up and make beautiful stewed apple which l eat the following week or freeze. Thee may be small rotten bits but they get chopped out. Slightly wrinkly apples in the potato bag also make them last longer

@TheLovleyChebbyMcGee

I have a 3 year old and he creates so much food waste! Like I literally can't make him eat everything, so get left with toast crusts, a few bites of food here and there, and then of course all the veg ends, banana peels, melon rinds etc that can't be eaten.

Same. I don’t think the adults in my house generate much food waste at all. But DD will decide on a whim she doesn’t like something she previously loved, or she’s not hungry or whatever, but not until after she’s pulled it all to bits. Not everything is suitable to go back in the fridge to be eaten another time.

I use leftovers - leftover curry at dinner becomes the next day's lunch, sausages go for hot breakfast sandwiches the next day, and mash gets stuff mixed in and turned into patties but I have a tendency to overbuy fresh veg. I feel very guilty about wasting the veg so I'm trying to be a lot more careful. Not easy though because the veg looks sooooo yummy!

I do this, it's known as The Bottom Of The Fridge Soup. The dcs really like it, esp with crusty rolls.

I do Leftover Pie - you can chuck almost anything in it, serve it with mash, peas and gravy and it will be wolfed down!

Also, not all of our waste is leftovers. I was cleaning out my fridge today and there was a lot of things I bought, mainly for my kids, which they just didn't eat. Yogurt for example. I think what happens here is I want them to eat these things, but when push comes to shove they choose something else

@LobsterNapkin

Surely you say 'these yoghurts are going off soon, so they need to be eaten up first, you can have xyz tomorrow'?

This thread is making me feel a bit sick. I have images of people shoving perfectly good food into a plastic bag and just chucking it in the bin, because they didn't fancy it, or bought too much, or just want to clear the fridge ready for the next shop to come in (which they will probably bin a good percentage of too) Horrible!

@DottyHarmer

I read that bread and potatoes are the worst culprits (in terms of food waste, not the bread and potatoes throwing things out!).

I think for a lot of small/single person households, it is “easy” to waste stuff because you use a few slices of bread only, or half the potatoes. Ok, you can make breadcrumbs and freeze them, but then that’s an awful lot of breadcrumbs building up. Dsis has a frozen loaf and extracts one slice of bread every morning. That is very eco but at the same time a bit depressing long term.

I divide a loaf into 3 bags and freeze them. Potatoes, you can roast or make portions of mash then freeze.

We need classes where kids are sat in front of an open, half-full refrigerator, and asked, "right, what can we make?"

This is such a great idea, we often have odd mish mash dinners just before we do a big shop because things need using up, I’d much rather do that than throw stuff away even if the meal is a bit ‘unusual’

@FlipFlops4Me

I do this, it's known as The Bottom Of The Fridge Soup. The dcs really like it, esp with crusty rolls.

I do Leftover Pie - you can chuck almost anything in it, serve it with mash, peas and gravy and it will be wolfed down!

See also, chuck it in & chant it pasta bake with whatever veg, and bacon/ham/chicken whatever is leftover in a tomato sauce/pesto & cheese on top (if there is any, without if not)

I occasionally throw out a bit of fruit or leftover salad if it's gone brown but overall we have very little food waste. Leftovers are boxed up and frozen. Bread is frozen and used for toast or breadcrumbs if it is getting stale. We had very little money when I was a child and often ran out of food completely so I hate throwing food away.

I find that freezing small amounts of leftovers with good intentions just fills the freezer with oddities that don't get used so I try to avoid having them.

I'll normally freeze most of the freezable things I buy straight away, like meat, then only defrost when I'm certain to use it. This makes a big difference and means it's not difficult to change the meal plan at short notice. The main driver for the rolling meal plan (I plan about 6 days ahead on a rolling basis) is whether a meal is accompanied by salad or veg, and what fresh salad and veg I'm trying to use. This week I swapped round Monday's casserole and Tuesday's lamb kebabs because the salad that came in the delivery yesterday was shorter in date than I hoped and needs to be used quicker. Because the lamb for kebabs and the batch cooked casserole are in the freezer until the night before I'll use them, it's not a problem to switch round.

Freezing meat as the default and defrost as you need it also means I'm freezing it at its freshest, rather than as a last resort.

No individual yogurts here either (more on the grounds of sugar than waste though), big tub of plan yogurt and ypu take a helping amd add a swirl of jam, or some fruit, honey, nuts etc as you fancy. Yogurt tub lasts forever but I can hasten its conclusion by cooking with it too.

@NineCmNails

Leftovers fed to animals are classed as food waste in the report.

How on earth did they measure any of it anyway?