EXTENDED: You've got another week to add your travel & holiday deals questions for expert MSE Oli as part of the latest Ask An Expert event.
Food Waste Audit Diary May 2019
tighteningthebelt
Forumite 502 Posts
Hi everyone!
I'm doing a tight audit of food waste for May 2019. I don't waste much, but there's always room for improvement with all these skills. I welcome any advice, or anybody who wants to do it along with me.
A little background...
I've been doing quite a bit of reading about this. It's obviously difficult for anyone to be exact with figures. The current estimate for food waste in the UK is 7 million tons. This is household food waste, not farm or supermarket waste. In a way such big figures are meaningless for us, too large to imagine. So I went looking for the per household sum... 7 million tons divided by 27 million household is 250kg per household per year. That's 4.8kg of food waste per household per week, or 0.68kg per day. in 'old money' that's 1lb 8oz. These figures seemed irrational to me, so i checked them with an academic at Loughborough Uni who has been in the news regarding food waste recently, and he assures me they are correct. He has challenged me to do a fun food audit. I can't resist a challenge!!
There are some caveats in the calculations. The figures include food composted by individuals. It includes leftover food given to pets. It includes drinks, or other food disposed of down the sink.
There are three categories of waste food; avoidable, unavoidable, and possibly avoidable.
Broadly speaking
'Avoidable' is food that could have been eaten at some point, but that has spoiled due to being left too long, examples might be mouldy bread or liquefied cucumber.
'Unavoidable' is things like banana or pineapple skins, eggshells, used teabags, that were never edible.
'Possibly avoidable' is things like peelings, which some people might eat and other not.
(I did briefly consider whether 'unavoidable' can even be classed as 'waste', the word waste implies carelessness and even extravagance to my mind, but I don't want to get too hung up on that, the figures have to be comparable or else it isn't a challenge at all!!)
So, this is how i will do my food waste diary... I'm going to discount 'possibly avoidable' as I eat edible things! I'm going to sort my food waste through the day into 'avoidable' and 'unavoidable'. After tea each night I'm going to weigh them, and post on here with any notes. I'm also going to make a note of how many people have eaten, as that's quite variable here, but on average there is a 'household'. I don't eat out, so there won't be any waste hidden from the figures.
There you go! I'll do my level best. Do join in or respond with your ideas, suggestions and experiences. (oh and its the first time I've started a thread, so forgive me if I've done anything that needs forgiveness)
I'm doing a tight audit of food waste for May 2019. I don't waste much, but there's always room for improvement with all these skills. I welcome any advice, or anybody who wants to do it along with me.
A little background...
I've been doing quite a bit of reading about this. It's obviously difficult for anyone to be exact with figures. The current estimate for food waste in the UK is 7 million tons. This is household food waste, not farm or supermarket waste. In a way such big figures are meaningless for us, too large to imagine. So I went looking for the per household sum... 7 million tons divided by 27 million household is 250kg per household per year. That's 4.8kg of food waste per household per week, or 0.68kg per day. in 'old money' that's 1lb 8oz. These figures seemed irrational to me, so i checked them with an academic at Loughborough Uni who has been in the news regarding food waste recently, and he assures me they are correct. He has challenged me to do a fun food audit. I can't resist a challenge!!
There are some caveats in the calculations. The figures include food composted by individuals. It includes leftover food given to pets. It includes drinks, or other food disposed of down the sink.
There are three categories of waste food; avoidable, unavoidable, and possibly avoidable.
Broadly speaking
'Avoidable' is food that could have been eaten at some point, but that has spoiled due to being left too long, examples might be mouldy bread or liquefied cucumber.
'Unavoidable' is things like banana or pineapple skins, eggshells, used teabags, that were never edible.
'Possibly avoidable' is things like peelings, which some people might eat and other not.
(I did briefly consider whether 'unavoidable' can even be classed as 'waste', the word waste implies carelessness and even extravagance to my mind, but I don't want to get too hung up on that, the figures have to be comparable or else it isn't a challenge at all!!)
So, this is how i will do my food waste diary... I'm going to discount 'possibly avoidable' as I eat edible things! I'm going to sort my food waste through the day into 'avoidable' and 'unavoidable'. After tea each night I'm going to weigh them, and post on here with any notes. I'm also going to make a note of how many people have eaten, as that's quite variable here, but on average there is a 'household'. I don't eat out, so there won't be any waste hidden from the figures.
There you go! I'll do my level best. Do join in or respond with your ideas, suggestions and experiences. (oh and its the first time I've started a thread, so forgive me if I've done anything that needs forgiveness)
A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You're welcome we can spare it, yellow socks
You're welcome we can spare it, yellow socks
0
This discussion has been closed.
Latest MSE News and Guides
Replies
You're welcome we can spare it, yellow socks
Also, due to freezer size, freezing isn't a sustainable solution as they do fill up very quickly and then take months to empty if you see it as a solution - so I do try to eat as much as I can without resorting to freezing.
Yesterday, say, I had a loaf that was just two crusts and one slice remaining - it'd been on the worktop a couple of days and was just 3 days out of date. It hadn't gone green... I had beans on toast with the crusts and I had the slice of bread with chocolate spread.
My only waste tends to be a few veg peelings, it's rare there's anything else that could count as waste. Today so far: Tops and tails of two small onions and dry onion skin. Also, the stalk join, inner white membrane and pips of one green pepper.
I will join you, if that's OK. I've got a pineapple as well - Aldi super six!
Do you want some suggested use-up methods (basic fridge-bottom stir-fry and soup for example) or recipes?
I always end up with bread crusts left too. They always end up as either some form of toasted sandwich or toasted for beans. Sometimes I use them as a kind of pizza base - top them with tomato and garlic paste, cheese and any other topping that I have to hand. Either toast one side and then the topping goes on the other and they are grilled or the topping is just put on the crust and cooked in the oven. It depends which member of the family is making them.
My veggie peelings are "the grotty/gone bad/black bits" in the main.
I never do stir-fry and am not a fan of soup
Just out of interest though, what disgusting and gross items can one be force fed that are made from onion skins?
You say the nicest things...
I like to think we wast very little and on the whole I think we acheiviet this well. We meal plan and only buy what we know will eat.
Peelings, tea bags etc are composted, along with the occassional piece of fruit which goes bad within a day or two of buying it.