What can be done to reduce food waste?

purpleivy

JackieO wrote: »

I wrap celery in tin foil as well as cabbage and it keeps perfectly for as long as I can eat it Being on my own a head of celery takes around a couple of weeks in salads unless I turn what remains into celery soup.As said before nowt gets wasted in my house :):) I store it at the bottom of the fridge

I have a 'vintage' celery jar that belonged to my grandmother....but a pint pot would do. It lives in the door of the fridge. I cut the bottom off the celery and the leave (the guinea pigs have those!) and the rest sits in water in the door of the fridge till we need it. It doesn't go bendy!

milasavesmoney

purpleivy wrote: »

I have a 'vintage' celery jar that belonged to my grandmother....but a pint pot would do. It lives in the door of the fridge. I cut the bottom off the celery and the leave (the guinea pigs have those!) and the rest sits in water in the door of the fridge till we need it. It doesn't go bendy!

Something to do with the base. Regrow celery. This works and is something we do. You don't get as thick of stalks but it's nice to use in soup and stir fry.
http://www.17apart.com/2012/02/growing-celery-indoors-never-buy-celery.html

Anne_Marie_2

Some more ideas for regrowing vegetables.
http://www.icreativeideas.com/13-vegetables-that-you-can-regrow-again-and-again/

Luckily here, fruit and veg is sold loose so you can buy exactly what you want. I do overdose on buying some things like tomatoes when they are extremely cheap, to roast, and then put in the freezer to use in sauces for a good bit of the year. Must admit that I've gotten out of the way of buying things pre-packed, and it hits me with a bang on my yearly visit back to the UK. It certainly can't be anything to do with the EU, as Cyprus is in the EU, so perhaps it's time for a campaign to the supermarkets/govt to stop this.
Whilst I think that reducing the use of carrier bags is great, I wasn't so keen on having to pay for one for clothing (I didn't this year, as was prepared, but was caught out last year). If they can do this with carrier bags, there should be some sort of fine for suppliers/supermarkets supplying fruit and veg in plastic, which they would not be able to pass on to customers.

I have very little food waste, ends of vegetables and plate scraps, I don't eat meat. I use toilet roll and kitchen roll inners in the wood fired oven. Egg shells get baked and ground up for adding to the dog food. We have a weekly bin collection and usually I have one carrier bag of waste, occasionally two. I don't compost, as it would stink too much, but do use my coffee grounds round the garden, and also for burning...it's a mosquito repellent.

I do agree with education on home economics for all children, as well as food education in the home. Used to love helping Mum cook, and eating raw bits of carrot and turnip as she made the soap, or licking the bowl when baking. Always a good time for a good chat too. Did the same with my daughter, although she hasn't quite got the same love of cooking that I do, but does it.

moneyistooshorttomention

usernameisvalid wrote: »

Food is cheap

I think that's the trouble


For the majority if the population food is a small part of their budget A chicken is just on average £4. A loaf as cheap as 35p

When I started work it cost me £20 to feed myself,dad, and sister for the week. That was out of a wage of £42.50 a week. Nearly 50% of my take home wage. That was over 30 years ago. Now I spend £30 a week and compare that to NMW that's just a days wage

when I was growing up, chicken was a fortune. Chicken was a great treat not one bit was wasted. Nowadays chicken is as cheep as chips and even the poorest can afford it

We have no respect for the food we put on the table anymore. It's a throwaway item. If we don't fancy what's in the fridge, sod it, chuck it and get a takeaway

The food being cheap bit depends on what food one eats.

I definitely wouldnt say food is cheap - and hence I try not to waste it (ie because I can't afford to). I usually make my own bread - but if I really can't be ars*d/find the time then I will buy a loaf of bread (and the ones I buy are in the region of £3 per loaf - because it's decent bread - organic/sourdough/etc). If I'm buying fresh salmon - then it's wild salmon (not farmed - because I've read about the conditions it's farmed under) and that costs a lot more than farmed salmon and the bit I bought the other day was around £3 (did me, in the event, for 2 meals - but still....). Apples - probably £2.50/£2.75 for only 5 or 6 (because they're organic).

Hence - at those sort of prices = I really kick myself if I waste food.

The thought of food being deliberately made dearer than that would definitely cause me a lot of worry.

People buying farmed fish/non-organic etc type of food would worry - if their reason for buying that way was lack of money - rather than "other priorities" for their money (sky tv, etc, etc).

thriftwizard

Florence J has just mentioned the idea of keeping a food waste diary on the August Grocery Challenge thread, originally mentioned by Oceanspirit IIRC. Now there's a worthwhile idea... not sure how you'd sell it to the general public, you might have to enlist Hugh FW and Jamie O, but it would probably be a big eye-opener for many people.

Though you'd have to define "waste" quite tightly - is compost waste? Is feeding it to pets & livestock, if appropriate, waste?

[Deleted User]

Actually MONEY SAVING MANIAC might just have the answer to the original question from HM Government and IF we reverted to shopping hours that were normal way back when which were 9 to 5.30 from Monday to Saturday except Wednesday which was early closing day and the shops closed at lunchtime and no shops open at all on Sundays there might be a significant lessening of food waste for two reasons 1) If the shops weren't open 24 hours a day there would be no alternative to using what you already have in the house and being inventive with your meals and 2) with shops only open until a certain time there would be far less opportunity to just go out and buy, less likelihood of binning perfectly good foodstuffs because the purchaser didn't fancy them and went out for fast food. Might just work once the moaning had stopped!

ellie99

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Actually MONEY SAVING MANIAC might just have the answer to the original question from HM Government and IF we reverted to shopping hours that were normal way back when which were 9 to 5.30 from Monday to Saturday except Wednesday which was early closing day and the shops closed at lunchtime and no shops open at all on Sundays there might be a significant lessening of food waste for two reasons 1) If the shops weren't open 24 hours a day there would be no alternative to using what you already have in the house and being inventive with your meals and 2) with shops only open until a certain time there would be far less opportunity to just go out and buy, less likelihood of binning perfectly good foodstuffs because the purchaser didn't fancy them and went out for fast food. Might just work once the moaning had stopped!

I can't see this working, you're making a huge assumption that everyone can get to the shops in those hours.

As an example, one of my sons lives alone, and works 8am - 5pm. In an out of town place which means his half hour lunch break isn't long enough to shop. Several evenings a week he goes straight to a second job, and finishes around 10/10.30 pm. He also works Saturdays. That's what life is like for some young people nowadays if they want their own home.

So when can he shop for food if you have all the shops closing at 5.30 pm and on Sundays? It would make him much more likely to go to a takeaway, which is more expensive.
Or are takeaways going to close at 5.30 pm as well?

Also, think of all the shop staff who would lose their jobs if shops hours were cut, putting people out of work.

[Deleted User]

Not making an assumption just recalling how things were many years ago in the UK. We lived a very different life back then but those were the hours that shops were open and somehow everyone managed to be fed, clothed etc. The only takeaway we had was the fish and chip shop and that was a rare treat, it came in newspaper too.

moneyistooshorttomention

There were still a lot of "housewives" around back then.

These days - it would make life difficult to get the shopping in for anyone except housewives, the unemployed, the retired.

Even as a retired person - shops shutting at lunchtime and half day closing just wouldnt work for me and I would forever be getting caught out by not being able to do shopping on the way back from a morning activity (because it was lunchtime) or deciding to Visit Town (my own or an adjacent one) and finding I'd picked the wrong one and it clashed with half-day closing.

Certainly those in employment would find things a good deal harder.

From the pov of shopworkers - then I could understand/sympathise with shutting foodshops on Sundays and, say, from 8pm on of an evening. I wouldnt want to work those sort of hours myself (ie night or Sunday) and I can distinctly recall thinking "Darn - that has just made one of my back-up types of job I could do if made unemployed again unfeasible - as I cant see how I could do them without being at risk of being told to work those hours and I can't do that". So - some restriction on hours to make life easier for shopworkers to only work in reasonably normal hours is possible - but definitely not lunchtime or half-day closing OR shops shutting on the dot of 5.30pm either.

moneyistooshorttomention

The other point - ie re take-aways - isnt feasible either (ie not having various different types of take-aways - and not just chippies).

We are all now used to quite a variety of food.

Add the fact that certain parts of the country don't yet fry their chips in suitable medium for vegetarians to eat them (recent memory of having blithely ordered a portion of chips from a chippie and being thankful the assistant had the sense to realise I'm a Southerner and there was going to be A Complaint if she hadnt told me they were fried in lard before I bought them, rather than afterwards - as that's what they do in this part of the country). Thought hadn't occurred to me they would be done in anything other than oil....as that's what I'm used to.