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?

Here's an idea. Do what you can to cut down food waste. Stop worrying about everyone else's circumstances/passing the buck.

If every house cuts down their demand because they're not wasting, prices should drop which benefits everyone.

Also agree about how difficult it is to buy for a single person, because most things come in a family-sized bag or packet, and you will never get through it in time unless you eat the same thing all day every day.

I once bought a lettuce and was eating some of it with both my lunch and dinner, it still took me 4 days to finish it. I don't want to have 8 meals in a row with lettuce (I appreciate it is a privilege to even be able to say this). A family with two or three kids would demolish a lettuce in a day or two max.

I can buy loose veg but in the country I live in, it ends up being more expensive than just a bog-standard pre-packaged bag of it. Shopping and cooking varied food for one single person, without relying on ready-meals, is harder than it seems.

I think this is another area where having children contributes to bad stuff for the planet, because when you dont have them you have more money and freedom to just buy what you fancy on the day after work, every day, in just turn right amounts.

A bottle of milk is good for a week after the alleged use by date.

I don't like to waste food, kids are a nightmare for it though. Extra left in pan saved but scraping it off a plate where they've played with it is a no from me.

My mother told me she throws eggs past their date out, I do the water test to see if they've gone bad not look at dates on them.

I usually bulk buy and batch cook, but then we have the luxury of a large chest freezer in the garage.

I often deliberately cook enough to freeze for lunches too. We have a fairly tight food budget and I hate seeing food wasted - not just for the money, but also the environmental impact of producing and transporting it, only for it to end up rotting.

@TheKeatingFive

Our household food waste consists of things like coffee grounds, bones, peelings, cores/inedible skins.

Composting would work for most of that

Genuine question - is it possible to compost indoors or does it have to be done in a garden? I live in a flat and although we have a communal sort of garden (some grass, some paving stones and a rotary washing line) we're not allowed to put our own things in it, and my council doesn't collect food waste. Although I guess if I make compost I then need to do something with it and I can't "garden" in the communal garden so would have no use for compost.

I live alone and my friend is in a two person household. We shop almost exclusively online and share stuff which reduces food waste. For example I don't have to buy carrots, onions or cauliflower as she splits her order with me and I can buy stuff that comes in normal sized packs and give her half. It means that we can both order and take advantage of the £40 free delivery and not waste food.

@Frazzled50yrold

I've been providing meals for an elderly person recently and I'm struck by how difficult it is for him to buy small portions without only eating ready meals. Even a pack of mushrooms is so much for him and has to be eaten so quickly.Potatoes turn green before he eats them, it's all really difficult. He's now eating my leftovers and I struggle to see how he could buy sensible quantities to cook for himself.Sensible use of freezers needs to be encouraged and it's the only way I see him being able to reduce his food waste. I was in a very large m&s last night and the strange bread which sits open to the public all day was being bagged up and disposed of. Why did they not reduce it or realise that if you're 30 loaves over you make less the following day.

My local Tesco sells mushrooms by you filling a paper bag with the amount you want. You or he may be able to find a shop that sells potatoes vegetables etc like this.

@cushioncovers I have this exact problem!

They say it's to avoid food waste but then it becomes my food waste. I'm continually on at Sainsbury's about it. They say short life items are notified in the receipt but they never are! I freeze what I can but space is limited.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Reduce more stuff near its sell by in the shops and don't give it to me. Or use Ocado 😆

@Embroidery

Its in capitalism interests to sell you something that only lasts 2 days, for full price. And then you have to buy it again . And again, several times a week. It also suits them dandy to put the blame on the consumer (like making phones out of glass). Capitalism directly benefits from weekly shopping being unsuitable and getting pp into supermarkets daily. Pp spend far more this way and all that waste is actually in their favour as if its bought and thrown away pp have to buy it again. If you were throwing away your sofa regularly youd need to buy more sofas. Dates are shorter now for this reason. We're all being had.

The cynic in me suspects that they also play the system by ensuring that short date food goes out to online shoppers so that they can point to their green credentials by reducing waste at the retail stage and kick it down the line to make it look like household waste because it has such a short timeframe for use.

One thing I'm making a conscious effort to do is bring my banana peel home from work for the compost bin rather than putting it in the rubbish bin at work.

classic
you have half of MN meal planning, batch cooking and buying 5 carrots as if their life depended on it, the other chucking perfectly good food away.

Ps, I also buy specified numbers of carrots, parsnips, potatoes.
Even better - my son works in a greengrocers so I get staff discount

Cross-posted with RiverSkater!

Genuine question - is it possible to compost indoors or does it have to be done in a garden?

I'm not sure you can do it inside. Our hot composter is smaller than a wheely bin and very self contained, but I don't think it's suitable for indoor use. Worth a google I guess.

We don't have much use for compost either, but give it all to mil who is a keen gardener.

@HesterShaw1

A bottle of milk is good for a week after the alleged use by date.

Do you mean unopened milk? The milk I buy usually isn't good past the use by date if it's been opened. I always smell it once it's past the date, and taste if I'm unsure of the smell, and once it's a day past the use by date it's usually off. More than once I've poured in date milk into my tea and found it's very off.

Genuine question - is it possible to compost indoors or does it have to be done in a garden?

It has to be done outdoors, I've never used a genuinely smell-free bin and the bran that you need to create the bokashi method becomes high volume in no time and you still need to bury the contents eventually.

The only workaround that I know is for people who are relatively near a community garden and drop off their compostables there. However, that's dubiously successful because so many people won't sort their food waste into the stuff that can be composted readily versus the stuff that can take years.

@TheKeatingFive

Genuine question - is it possible to compost indoors or does it have to be done in a garden?

I'm not sure you can do it inside. Our hot composter is smaller than a wheely bin and very self contained, but I don't think it's suitable for indoor use. Worth a google I guess.

We don't have much use for compost either, but give it all to mil who is a keen gardener.

Thank you, I'll do some googling.

That's a brilliant system @ilovesooty

Genuine question - is it possible to compost indoors or does it have to be done in a garden?

I forgot to add, genuine composting will need worms at some point and they will escape which is horrible indoors.

I work in Supply Chain and Logistics.
You don't want to know what all of the major food retailers generate in waste every week...

@Pazuzu

Here's an idea. Do what you can to cut down food waste. Stop worrying about everyone else's circumstances/passing the buck.

If every house cuts down their demand because they're not wasting, prices should drop which benefits everyone.

Yes, I think that's the way to go.

And this includes not making people feel guilty if they have challenging circumstances.

@richardmarxisinnocent there are a few ideas for indoor composting on this link.
www.carryoncomposting.com/441149726
You could use any compost you produce for growing food in window boxes. Things like lettuce grow really well on your windowsill and then you can cut exactly what you need at the time.

Re: indoor composting

If you have the space or an outhouse, or even outside your front door you can operate a wormery.

For those of us that live in flats that is not so easy.

@EmKayEm

I work in Supply Chain and Logistics. You don't want to know what all of the major food retailers generate in waste every week...

This really distresses me.

Government need to get a grip on it.

Why am I ekeing out my weekly food budget to provide an extra tin for the Food Bank when this is happening?

It undermines any credibility as a civilised society to be so wasteful of planet and resources.