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Sustainability | | Apr 30, 2021

How To Reduce Your Food Waste

How to reduce your Food Waste?

This is a big issue worldwide. It actually goes far beyond the individual waste and it’s more complex than that, but let’s see some numbers, to get a bigger picture.

According to IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), about 10% of GHG come from food waste alone. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) estimates that 1,3 million tons of waste is produced by industrialised countries. UN estimates that globally every year there is 1,3 billion tons of food being wasted - that’s one third of all food production. In EU, it’s estimated to be 89 million tons. In Portugal it is about 1 million tons, being 324k referring to household waste.

Too many numbers, a big headache. Right?

The question here is: What can we do as individuals to decrease our food waste?

  • Take inventory of what you have in your house - in the fridge, freezer and pantry;
  • think about what you would like to eat on the following days;
  • buy only what you need and make a list to guide you when you’re shopping;
  • know how to store different products - fridge or pantry, in a cloth, box or water, etc.;
  • Cook your own meals - it’s even cheaper than eating out, so you have that going for you as well;
  • re-purpose food scraps - regrow them, make your own veggie stock, feed animals (make some bird feeders - mix some margarine and seeds with veggie scraps);
  • compost.

The good thing is that things are changing and there are already initiatives to decrease that amount of food waste (in production, supermarkets and restaurants) and to reuse some products that would be considered as waste and discarded.

How to Reduce your Food Waste written by Joana Vieira

If you like my content feel free to buy me a coffee ☕️

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