Food Waste

I'm pretty evangelical about recycling. We regularly fill our recycling bin (so much so that we have 2 green wheely bins outside) and I take a box full of glass to the bottle bank every time I go to the supermarket. I hate to see re-usable things go in the bin, and take unwanted household items to charity shops, Leeds Community Clothes Exchange or find a way to reuse them at home. 

But the one thing that we do throw away is food. I try to make sure we use up leftovers as much as possible, but before starting to live LAGOM I knew that far too much usable food waste was ending up in the bin. 

Step one was to better store the food we have. With very limited storage space, the store cupboard was a bit of a mess, hard to sort through and not very appealing. All our dried food (pasta, rice, sugar, cereal) went straight into glass jars so I can see what we have and make better use of the space in the cupboard.

Step two is to make sure we only cook the right amount of food, to cut down on waste (and reduce our waistlines in the process!). I got hold of a spaghetti measuring tool from the local council to reduce the amount we cooked and started better planning meals to include enough leftovers to eat the next day or to freeze to eat later in the week. 

The lunch box I was given at my induction is perfect for this, allowing me to keep different bits of the meal separate ready to take to work - more of these will be in a future shopping list to replace the miscellaneous plastic tubs spilling out of the cupboard!

Step three is what actually ends up in the bin. The council collect garden organic waste bi-monthly, so my plan was to recycle all peelings, ends and skin from our veggies in a caddy in the kitchen, going into the brown bin when full. This has been WONDERFUL! I had no idea how much organic waste was ending up in the bin and now we have drastically reduced the waste going to landfill - a big LAGOM success! We're in the process of buying our first house, and garden composting is going to be the next step here so we can make the most use of the waste (and can start adding tea bags, egg shells and pizza boxes too!)

I've also been making better use of the freezer - making big pots of chilli to freeze for future meals, freezing fresh herbs in oil and individually freeze tortillas for enchiladas - no more mouldy bread or sad limp herbs for us!

So some little changes and big successes so far!