There are no exact figures in Ireland on the extent of the food waste but the best comparison would be with England where the organisation WRAP has discovered that one third of all food bought is thrown out and this includes potatoes, bread, salads, fruit and meat. This can cost up to 1000 euro for the average household.
The average person throws out 300kg of black bin rubbish each year and one third of this is food waste. Lemons, apples, strawberries, grapes, kiwi, carrots, peppers, broccoli, mushroom and salad are best kept in the fridge while bananas and pineapples are not. Tomatoes, melons and oranges can be stored either way. Potatoes and onions prefer cool dark places for storage. Research shows that if we managed to prevent generating some of our waste and recycled and composted we could reduce our rubbish by 70 per cent.
Odile Le Bolloch, EPA spokesperson said “It’s worth spending five minutes making a shopping list and let the children assist in making the list or let them make a short list of their own. When you get to the supermarket, where possible, let the children use their own little trolley and pick the items from their list from the shelves themselves.
“Know your children and know your trolley: experience goes a long way to removing excess and saving money in your shop. Get to know the quantities that you and your children eat comfortably and use measuring implements in the kitchen to ensure you cook the right amount. Get the children involved in the cooking-it may be messy but you won’t be cleaning food off plates later. Children will be more likely to eat a healthy meal if they have helped prepare it.”
Bulk buying makes sense: don’t buy individual packs of children’s items, such as yoghurts when you can buy a large container and share the spoils. This reduces over buying, over eating and packaging. But do watch for bulk buying on some perishable items that will never be eaten before they go off.
Twenty apples at a bargain price with an immediate best before date is not a bargain but a recipe for disaster when you will have to discard at least 20 per cent of them in a few days.
Children can become top class smoothie makers with over ripe fruit that would otherwise have disappeared in the rubbish.
Shop daily, buying the food you need for each day is the ideal solution advised by www. organiseit.co.uk but not practical advice for a lot of people who have time only for a weekly shop.
Put a meal planner in place. Know what you intend to cook for lunch and dinner each day in advance and stick to it. This will reduce the guess work at the supermarket and allows you to cook more than one meal from the ingredients you have. Then you can freeze some for another day, instead of the usual scenario of cooking a half tray of mince and leaving the rest to sit in the fridge which could end up in the bin because it wasn’t used in time.
By not generating waste we can eliminate the need to handle, transport, treat and dispose of waste. We can also avoid having to pay for these services. In the light of significant issues arising from the disposal of food waste and the realisation of costs associated with this, the National Waste Prevention Programme - Prevention Plan 2009-2012 set out to promote food waste prevention and home composting.
