Three Ways of Reducing Food Waste at Home

In my English class, these days we have been doing research about food waste. We have been studying the effects it has on the planet, and how important it is that we all start realizing that by throwing away food, we are wasting water, energy and more resources. And also that by wasting food we are even contributing to problems like hunger in the world;

because that food we aren’t eating and throwing away, another person could be eating it. So after reflecting a little bit, I asked myself, how can I help to make this problem stop from going further? And then I realized that if I wanted to help, I had to start not to try to waste food from home. If you also want to start reducing food waste at your home, you can follow these three easy steps: shopping smarter, saving leftovers, and documenting your waste.

First of all, if you want to reduce food waste at home you need to start shopping smarter. This means that you should buy exactly what you need, and be realistic. Don’t do an impulsive buy, and don’t buy extra food if you know that probably you won’t be able to eat it.

To avoid doing an impulsive buy,  plan meals and use grocery lists, and this way you just
have to stick to what you have written in the list. And also, instead of doing a bulk shopping trip once a week, you can also go shopping every few days to get just the things you need. This would make you waste less food as you are just buying the things you need and not more.

Second of all, saving leftovers from breakfasts, lunches or dinners is a great way to avoid food waste at home. Learn how to store food so you can store any type of it, and save as much as you can. For example, I love when we eat pasta at home and we don’t finish it because it is too much, and then my mom puts it inside a Tupperware and I eat it later for dinner.

Make sure you have a plan to use them up and don’t forget about them before they go bad. A good tip to remember that you have leftovers to eat is to store them in clear glass containers and not in opaque one so you can see clearly the food once you open your fridge.

Saving leftovers save more than food; it also saves your time and money.

Last but not least, another way to reduce throwing away food at home is to document what you waste.

For the next month, make a list of everything you threw out. Then, analyze it so you can figure out what you could be doing better, like buying less of something, what foods you don’t eat anymore, if you should pay more attention to leftovers, if you should buy less...etc.

This step is really important to do it every month so you can waste less every time, and also realize if you are doing something wrong so you can make it better.

In conclusion, food waste is a really big problem we should take care of because it is about to start going too far. We are wasting a lot of food annually, for example in 2015 we disposed of 37.6 million tons of food waste. This really isn’t good; because we are losing resources, land, and energy because of this.

Many benefits come if we reduce wasted food. Because we would buy less food, we would have more money; we would conserve more energy and resources.

I think that even though it isn’t easy to stop a problem this difficult, if we all start at home, we could make a difference.

Works Cited.

Huffstetler, Erin. “13 Practical Ways to Avoid Food Waste”. Thebalanceeveryday.com. Dotdash publishing family. 8 Dec 2018. Web. 10 Mar 2019.

Kubala, Jillian. “20 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Food Waste”. Healthline.com. Healthline Media. 20 Nov 2017. Web. 10 Mar 2019.

Newcomer, Laura. “29 Smart and Easy Tips to Reduce Food Waste”. Greatist.com. Greatist. 26 Nov 2013. Web. 10 Mar 2019.

United States Environmental Protection Agency. “Reducing wasted food at home”. Epa.gov. United States Government. 19 Jan 2017. Web. 10 Mar 2019.