7 Ways to Reduce Food Waste at Home

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Food waste is a real problem in the United States. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This means BILLIONS of pounds food going to the trash instead of feeding families in need. 

Why should you worry about food waste? Imagine going to the grocery store and buying $100 worth of groceries. You come back home and dump 40% of it in the trash. Sometimes it’s a gallon of milk you didn’t finish or vegetables that have rotted in your fridge. You just wasted $40 of your hard-earned money. 

This is a real problem for many families including mine. We buy too much food, we don’t use it before it goes bad, or we forget about it. Here are some tips that we have used to reduce food waste in our home:

Make a Plan

I take time to inventory what we have to use up in the fridge to figure out what to cook for the week. This goes on on our family dry erase board. If there are ingredients we are out of, we would add them to our grocery list. To illustrate how I do this, I’ve created a FREE Mix and Match Meal Planner to help you figure out your weekly meals based on what you have on hand. 

While grocery shopping, you can avoid food waste by buying half the fruit or vegetable. You can also do this by being mindful of how much you are buying and wasting each week and adjusting what you buy.

We have stopped buying whole gallons of milk because we end up throwing away half a gallon. When I buy milk, I also make sure that the expiration date is at least three weeks away so we have time to finish the milk. Note that expiration dates are guidelines but you should try to finish your food way before it expires to avoid food waste.

Ingredients with Multiple Recipes

Our grocery list usually consists of ingredients that we can use in multiple dishes. If you want to try a new recipe that has ingredients you don’t regularly use, see if you can find substitutions for them, get them in small portions, or ask friends/family if they have some you can use.

For a lactation cookie recipe, my fellow mom friend gave me some brewer’s yeast just for this recipe. This saved me from wasting the leftover yeast since I don’t use this on a regular basis. If you really have to buy an ingredient for your recipe, make a huge batch of the entree to freeze so you can use it all up or find other recipes where you can use this ingredient.

Freeze Food

We like to buy food in bulk or when our favorite items go on sale. With a family of three, we know we can’t finish all that we buy in one week. Therefore, we freeze most of our bulk groceries as soon as we get home. Meat, spinach, fruit, and muffins do really well in the freezer. We also like to buy frozen vegetables like stirfry mixes because it’s easy to incorporate into dishes and we don’t have to worry about it rotting.

Donate Excess Food

Many local agencies and food banks are feeding more families due to the impact of COVID-19 so they are in need of your excess food. Over the years, we have donated canned food to Aloha Harvest via my church and to Aloha United Way via my work.

When I was a temporary worker at Aloha Harvest, our drivers would collect food from restaurants, cafes, hotels, and parties. If you have a birthday party with a lot of leftover food, consider giving it to Aloha Harvest. Your food will be a gift to families in need. 

Share Food

If you shop at warehouses like Sam’s Club or Costco, you can split the cost of certain items with family or neighbors. Even though we all have Costco memberships, my friends/neighbors and I have shared bulk items like bread and eggs. You save money from buying in bulk but you also save money from not wasting food. 

Leftover Day

We eat a lot of leftovers at home because we make big batches to save us cooking time. About once every two weeks, we have a leftover day where all of our meals are various leftovers here and there that we want to finish. This keeps us from throwing away good food and challenges us to be creative in eating our leftovers. 

Mishmash Recipes

If you find yourself with one or two pieces of a certain ingredient, you can incorporate them into a mishmash recipe like a smoothie, soup, stew, stirfry, or fried rice. If I have a bunch of random fruits, I like to throw them into a smoothie. If I have a lot of vegetables, they are added to a stirfry with whatever protein and sauces I have on hand. You should try to master the basics of these types of recipes because they come in handy when figuring what to do with your leftover ingredients. 

Although we have reduced the amount of food waste we are producing, we still have more to do eliminate food waste in our home completely.

What are some ways you reduce food waste at home? Comment below!

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