Food Waste: Strategies to Avoid It! What do you do?

I do some of the ideas below to help me avoid food waste. I still waste way more food than I want to.

I have a "use this first" basket in the larger basket where root crops go (garlic, onion, potatoes).

I put pieces of veggie (1/2 an onion or bell pepper, for example) in a see thru hard plastic container in the fridge. It lives on the edge of the shelf so I see it all the time.
I date the veggies I put away in the back pantry, so I use the oldest first (lunch bags, dated with grease pencil).

Other things I do that are more common:

Make gravy or stock from drippings. scraps, etc.
Save bacon and other meat fats
Cook plainly things I can use in the future, in bulk so I have at least one portion for the freezer: rice, noodles, bacon, mashed potatoes, etc.

I mean to but dont regularly (and should):

Use old bread as the basis of dinner at least 2x a month.
Use more peels for stock.
Use potato peels for snacks.

We eat left overs for lunch and I incorporate them into dinner. The plan is to do this 2x a week and have the remainders 1 day a week. We rarely manage that. It's what I'm going to focus on first.

I think this is a great topic to discuss!

My wife and I have the same issue that we try and consciously work on to varying degrees of success.

We live in a two person household but cook for a batallion. (I think this stems from growing up in a big family.)

This can get frustrating when you eat the same thing for days on end or it disappears into the freezer for an uncomfortably long time.

While not a root cause solution, I have taken to sharing with family and friends.

This can take the form of having a family dinner and sending folks home with food. My grandfather lives alone so we often bring him foods that we know he would enjoy if we make them. I can essentially bring any sort of baked good to my workplace and it will be gone within the first few hours.

There is still 'waste' but I do everything to prevent it from entering a garbage bag waste stream. Between my compost and my chickens, I can keep the look partially closed at the end of the day.

I'd encourage folks to get comfortable adjusting recipes to fit the amount of mouths being fed. I'm still working on it myself.

There are only two of us, and a dog.

I use only half a recipe so we only have two meals or less from a recipe.

The dog gets what was left after this which is just a tiny amount or what is left is frozen for another quick meal.

We eat mostly a carnivore diet.

Once a month and grocery prices keep me from buying a lot of veggies.  I am not going to pay $3.00 for one pepper.  I do spend once in a while with a head of cauliflower or broccali.  Then I freeze it for later use.

Everything in the freezer is dated.

Bone broth makes the bones easy to get rid of or I buy boneless.

A few things that have been very helpful for us.

Owning livestock that will eat your leftovers. Between the chickens and rabbits, you could technically say we do not ever waste anything as far as food stuffs.

Making pizzas out of the leftovers.

Utilizing a vac sealer.

Utilizing a blender to make smoothies.



A couple of real world scenarios are:

Today, I am smoking a couple of pork shoulders in my stick burner (16#s total before smoking). Even though there are 7 of us, I will vac seal a lot of it into portions. If you like to cook large quantities, I don't think you change that necessarily, you should plan ahead and preserve the excess for future use. You could use the time it would take to cook a meal from scratch for something else on the day you utilize the preserved portions.

Tomorrow is leftover pizza day. We have some pork sausage, and ground deer meat a few days old and will have pulled pork along with plenty of toppings from the garden.

The extremely wet spring has produced an abundance of cucumbers. We are keeping up okay but if I miss one or two and they get huge, I feed them to the chickens and rabbits.

Our "breakfast" for my wife and I is a smoothie since neither of us are breakfast eaters in the traditional sense. We like our coffee too much for that and it stymies our appetite. We use up eggs, vegetables and fruits in the blender.

I also love this topic! We have a few similar threads (including a super duper one of yours, Jennie, that is chock full of ideas) that people may enjoy having a look through.
https://permies.com/t/146510/Shelf-Stable-Food-Flow-Avoiding#1144076
https://permies.com/t/179745/Vera-Food-Waste-Fight-Thread#1413781
https://permies.com/t/174706/Tips-recipes-reduce-food-waste#1371391

We all take lunches (with leftovers from dinner) and I try to have at least two days a week where I don't cook, so we either eat or re-engineer leftovers to make something else. We really don't usually have much waste or leftovers, in fact yesterday I had leftover bread to make breadcrumbs for our meatballs and I took a picture: I always see these articles about "leftover bread" but we never, ever have leftover bread!!! I do a lot of big batches and freeze things (waffles, sliced sourdough bread, batches of beans for beans-and-rice lunches) and that really cuts down on the waste.
Our most common leftover/waste is usually fruit (which gets juiced or cooked into compote for us to put on our oatmeal in the morning) or rice (which gets made into omuraisu, rice balls, or fried rice depending on what's around. Today-- a no-cook day when my husband plays soccer and usually BBQs with his friends-- my dinner will be ochazuke rice soup with some leftover rice.

I don't worry too much about waste, quite frankly. Every so often my pantry will be a bit full and I'll plan meals to use up specific ingredients. Then next time I don't buy the things that took a while to use. Food very, very rarely goes bad here, and if it does I have rabbits to eat manky produce, a dog with very low standards to eat anything the rabbits can't have, and ultimately bokashi and compost. Nothing goes to waste, ultimately.

We eat leftovers.
We upcycle leftovers: https://permies.com/t/204592/Perpetual-stew-friends
We make broth out of scraps.
We make soup from almost anything including stale bread.
We ferment or can anything coming out of the garden too fast to eat.
Most of our potential waste is plant-based and one of the worm bins will take that.
And if they've had enough or it's animal-based, one of the garden beds or compost heaps will take it.

Tereza Okava wrote:I also love this topic! We have a few similar threads (including a super duper one of yours, Jennie, that is chock full of ideas) that people may enjoy having a look through.
https://permies.com/t/146510/Shelf-Stable-Food-Flow-Avoiding#1144076
https://permies.com/t/179745/Vera-Food-Waste-Fight-Thread#1413781
https://permies.com/t/174706/Tips-recipes-reduce-food-waste#1371391.

I'd forgotten about that post! The use first basket is still in use, it's the "use first" basket I talk about. So is the "end of" shelf-stable pantry goods in small jars, but it's in the pantry now.

I've wanted a worm bin for some time. Like many things here, it's waiting on available space. My idea was to have a worm bin in the winter when the compost bin is just an ice cube.

We didn't use our open pallet compost bin in winter, except for coffee grounds, as i didn't want to attract the vermin that live hereabouts, or the predators that would come for them... we have bobcats. coyote, and a local dog pack. Also skunk, possum, rabbits, squirrels, ground hog, deer, porcupine, and vermin.

We use everything we can for soup stock, bread crumbs etc, but a vermicompost system (worm bin, though mine contains springtails and isopods too) and chickens make sure almost nothing else ever goes to waste.

A worm bin need only be as large as a documents box, and that kind of smaller scale bin is well suited for starting off a breeding population. Chickens have the added bonus of stacking functions in the garden with more cleanup and recycling, garden bug pest control and eggs.

When cooking, I only cook up enough for that meal. I have a small slow-cooker which will hold just enough stew for two people, so no left overs. If there are left overs, it means we cooked too much. Stews can be started off in the slow-cooker then transferred the haybox, minimising power waste too.

But I do also cook up batches of things like rice or beans. The rice is kept in the fridge and will keep for up to a week and is good for making quick meals, especially this time of year when we turn it into rice salad so there's no extra heat put into the house that we don't want. Beans I will spread on a silicone sheet and freeze down then pack into a bag so we can grab just what we need when we need it. I usually have two bags of different sorts of beans in the freezer. When one runs out, I cook up a different sort of bean.

Bread is bought from the Too-Good-To-Go app at €3 a box for yesterday's bread, though for some reason there is usually at least some of that morning's bread too. We feast on the best looking bit and the rest goes in the freezer. When the supply starts to get low, we book another box to pick up the next time one of us goes to town. My other half is in town right now and has just picked this box up.



This reduces food waste even before it hits our home as it's being removed from the waste stream. Mystery fresh bread from that morning notwithstanding. I have no explanation for that...

Then we have also managed to source two butchers that will give customers free offcuts. Last Friday the boys went shopping at a town a little further away as there was something they needed that they couldn't get in the nearest one and my other half went into the big butcher place and bought a chicken, a pork heart and two pork tongues and asked about offcuts. The guy asked how much he wanted so he hopefully suggested 2kg and received this bag which weighed over 3kg.



I sorted out anything with bones and froze them to turn into bone broth. That left over 2kg of fatty offcuts with skin, mostly pork, which I rendered down to get lard from. I got this much...



Then the left-overs, which were rich in meat, fat and collagen, I cut up into small pieces and lay on a silicone tray to freeze. I can then grab a handful to add to meals or put in with rice as a flavour, protein, collagen, fat and calorie boost at basically zero cost. And again, removed from the waste stream.



I grow galega cabbage, which is tall and perennial, so when I want a few cabbage leaves I just take off what leaves I want to use that day. I pick green onion, again, just what I want for that day. Same with herbs or comfrey or fat-hen (lamb's quarters). I don't over-stock the fridge with so much stuff that it blocks the view of what's in there else stuff gets buried at the back and forgotten. I learned that lesson long ago! Olives are brined and will keep for well over a year if necessary. Some surplus fruit is frozen. Some is turned into chutney. Bones are turned into bone broth and then given to the dog. No chickens or pigs or goats or donkeys these days, but ultimately there's a humanure heap with accepts anything that really can't get used, though most kitchen scraps get ruth-stouted under the mulch in the veggie garden.

You’re doing a lot already very intentional and inspiring! I especially like the idea of a “use this first” basket and dating pantry items. I also struggle with leftovers sometimes, but setting small, realistic goals like 1–2 leftover-based meals a week is a smart approach. Thanks for sharing your system got a few ideas I’d like to try myself!

We've found that our local Black-led Mutual Aid food project is great for reducing food waste.

Firstly, almost all their food cones from the UK FareShare non-profit scheme: https://fareshare.org.uk/ All the regional supermarket companies are, I think, part of this. Almost everything is cooked into meals in community kitchens.

Secondly, any food excess to the scheme users needs within the remain edible life of the food, is offered to volunteers.

Thirdly, the project always struggles to get enough fresh veg & fruit, so any local gardeners with gluts are invited to donate including though our new community garden scheme.  In the past 12 months, that's avoided wasting e.g. apples, rhubarb & courgettes, and attracted donations of e.g. gooseberries, kale & plums too.

So, I think having access to a thriving community kitchen is a huge bonus for reducing food waste!