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Food Waste Audit Diary May 2019

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  • right guys, I'm so sorry, but i'm going to have to duck out. I've been silly busy and I have limited energy resources.
    struggling to post the table so it'll have to do!
    column 1 date
    column 2 unavoidable waste
    column 3 avoidable waste
    column 4 day total


    01 115 30 145
    02 65 95 160
    03 475 10 485
    04 75 525 600
    05 125 20 145
    06 155 10 165
    07 115 10 125
    08 155 0 155
    09 40 0 40
    10 90 15 105
    11 210 40 250
    12 315 25 340
    13 100 0 100
    14 95 0 95
    15 90 5 95
    16 160 0 160
    17 150 10 160
    18 210 85 295


    totals for the 18 day period
    unavoidable 2740g
    avoidable 880g (over half from 1 spoiled pineapple)
    total 3620g
    daily averages
    3620/18 days is an average of 201g per day
    comprising; average unavoidable 152g. average avoidable 48g.
    extrapolating those figures annually
    73.4kg a year in total
    55.6kg unavoidable
    17.5kg avoidable

    could have done better, could have done worse.

    one thing i know for sure is that's its very very hard to keep on top of this when you're busy with other things!!!

    I certainly wan't judgy about this in any way before, and i'm glad because i know with great certainty you can easily weigh in 74kg/year for just 1.5ish people when being very diligent and cooking from fresh.

    This last few days I've eaten out and had a chippy, just because i've been kn..shattered. then there's no real point in doing the adding as you've just delegated your prep waste to someone else! Again I wasn't judgy about this before because I know many people on this forum are parents to dependent children, caring for family members, working full time, have their own problems, just about coping, prioritising other things with their attention, or all of the above... but I was really surprised how quickly my diligence in the measuring and preparing from fresh fell apart when things kicked up a notch here for me and my gang.

    In summary, and having given it a great deal of thought, I'd come back to where we all started out... that it's unfair to count your unavoidable and avoidable together, and while recognising both categories have the same environmental impact in decomposition, both categories do not have the same blame loading, or the same opportunity to effect change at the household level. I've got a residual shimmer of irritation that whoever is the decision maker about how these figures are compiled and communicated has facilitated that. But then I often think that about official figures once you've drilled down into them a bit and winkled out the detail behind the headlines.

    anyways, must crack on...

    It's been a pleasure, and thank you so much to everyone who has been supportive and made great suggestions. Appreciated.
    A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
    You're welcome we can spare it, yellow socks
  • themadvix
    themadvix Posts: 8,653 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Mortgage-free Glee! Photogenic
    No need to apologise TTB - it's been very enlightening all round - from the way it's measured to the amounts you've produced and I know I've learnt from your experiment (know how to keep a pineapple good now, learnt that they produce them with geothermal heat in Iceland and about ethylene in bananas - thanks SL!).

    I'll certainly remain more aware of food waste as a result. Thanks for sharing with us!
    Mortgage free 16/06/2023! £132,500 cleared in 11 years, 3 months and 7 days

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  • Vanlady
    Vanlady Posts: 148 Forumite
    100 Posts Third Anniversary Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Ditto.....no need to apologise TTB.
    It been so interesting reading your journey and has made me much more aware of any food that I waste.....I now think twice before cutting off the end of that carrot! .
    Thank you for sharing with us x
  • bouicca21
    bouicca21 Posts: 6,686 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    It hasn’t changed my attitudes since most of my food waste is in the unavoidable category and practically all of that goes to my worms. I just didn’t realise that the unavoidable still counted as food waste.

    It’s all in the semantics, waste from food versus wasted food.

    My concerns now are about reducing my plastic waste - most of which comes from pre-wrapped food.
  • Don't apologise. It has been an eye opener for me and I appreciate what you have done up to now has been quite demanding. Thanks for enlightening me.
    Lisa x
    Fashion on a Ration Challenge 2020 - 66 (+ 19 carried over) = 85 coupons/Spent 23.5 coupons
    Frugal Living Challenge 2020
    Make Do, Mend and Minimise 2020
  • As everyone else has said, no need to apologise, it's been an eye-opener for me also. I was (am) one of the judgey ones, what came into our house got consumed either by the humans, dog, cat, worms or local wildlife, but now knowing that the figures quoted include things like dead teabags and banana skins etc it had made me much more aware of how the amount of food waste can be so high.

    p.s. I found a random bran flake hanging out on the floor the other day, I think they make a break for it occasionally which would explain your one the other week.
  • Hope everyone had some fun reducing our food waste. We only threw peel out last month, with chicken bones given to the birds, as well as the excess pastry. Zest from lemons went in the spotted Richard, but orange peels remain a problematic.

    So we had four caddies the whole month, most of which were not full.

    Be back later if we go again?
  • Much obliged to you for imparting extraordinary data to us. Your commitment is remarkable and all data is dependable for new perusers. Keep doing awesome future, thank you for sharing this valuable post.
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