Over one third of all food produced globally goes to waste, with more than half of this food waste occurring in the home. If everyone reduced their individual food waste, it would hugely reduce the impact on the environment. Want to be savvier with your food waste? Then read on for Frugalicious: 5 Ways to Get into Zero-Food Waste Mode!
1. Freeze!
When food items are reaching their ‘use by date’, pop them in the freezer where they will keep almost indefinitely. You can freeze a huge variety of foods, including fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish. When freezing fruits and vegetables, remove any skin or peel and chop into bite size chunks or slices. Then you can pop them into a freezer bag ready for freezing.
If you spot that your yogurt is reaching its use by date, place that in the freezer too and you can create a delicious-frugalicious frozen yogurt that in many cases tastes just like ice cream – fantastic as we climb into the warmer months!
2. Only Buy What You Need
Buying more food than you can eat is a huge contributor to food waste, and is bad for your personal economy as well as your karma! It is therefore important to be more frugaliciously-mindful when you go shopping.
Stick to a shopping list so that you keep to buying the pre-decided types as well as the right amounts of food. The days of falling for whatever catches your eye on the supermarket shelves should be long gone from your mind!
3. Meal Plan
Plan the meals that you will be eating for the week ahead. This way, you won’t end up buying loads of food and shoving it in a dark corner of the cupboard to never see the light of day!
Meal planning will guarantee that you only buy ingredients that you will be using in each of your recipes. If you’re following a recipe which creates multiple servings, freeze the leftovers in individual portions so that you’ve always got back up meals in the freezer. Save your time, energy and money for higher leverage affairs – how’s that for some frugalicious magic?
4. Safe Storage
Storing foods at the correct temperature can extend the shelf life through preventing mould growth or rotting. Be sure to read the product packaging to determine the optimal storage for each food item. Otherwise, storing certain foods at lower temperatures can elongate the shelf life.
Examples here include storing bread, apples, and onions in the fridge where they can live happily for at least a few weeks!
5. Buy Seasonally
Buying seasonal foods, such as fruits and vegetables, can help prevent food wastage throughout production, and it also supports local farming. Out of season foods must be transported from other countries and spoiling of these foods can sporadically occur throughout this logistical process. On the contrary, buying in-season food lowers the demand for these imported foods, and of course, seasonal food is fresher, tastier, more nutritious and cheaper! Catching onto our frugalicious vibe yet?
It is really important that we all try to limit our food waste. It’s an enormous contributor to the climate crisis and it’s something we can all prevent simply by taking individual responsibility and using lists. These simple, easy strategies should help you to only buy what you need and prevent your food from rotting too soon.
What are your tips for going frugalicious and lowering food waste? Remember that being frugal doesn’t mean being cheap or miserly, it means being mindful about not wasting anything that Mother Nature provides you, (and that’s every morsel of food you’ll ever eat!) whilst enjoying everything with a heightened sense of gratitude. What are your favourite zero-food waste tips and tricks? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram!
