Could you reduce your food waste?

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We don’t waste food, we only buy what we know we will eat. The waste bits, like skins and peelings go down the sink via a waste disposal unit.

A few years ago I thought I was doing the world of good by popping all my flat’s food waste, thankfully mostly cuttings from meal prep, into a caddy to then take out to a a larger bin on the street at regular intervals during the week. Unfortunately, I did not foresee just how often I would need to make the trip. Every so often I would open the caddy to find a maggots, flies, cockroaches and one day even an army of ants marching through the house, across the kitchen floor and up the unit to where the container of yummy decomposing food sat. This wasn’t my finest hour and but when you’re as green conscious as I am and you don’t have a garden as a Londoner, you really need to keep on top of your food recycling. That said, I would jump at the opportunity to do this only, only be much, much more disciplined next time.

Edinburgh Council collects food waste and I’m lucky there’s a collection bin right outside my door. The council also gives everyone who asks a starter pack, ie a small plastic bin and a medium plastic bin plus a few compostable bags. It took a while, but the collection bins are everywhere now as far as I’m aware.

I tried an indoor wormery a long time ago, before food waste recycling had entered the council’s mind. It was a round plastic bin with a tap at the bottom (to collect the accumulated liquid to use as plant food) and a breathing hole at the top for the worms. The starter pack for this as I recall was some sort of compost to put the worms in, calcified seaweed, and the worms. It didn’t really work in that I think I had too little food waste to give them and they disappeared. I ordered a new batch of worms and tried again, but they disappeared too, so I gave up. The interesting thing is that the compost I made so very slowly never smelled bad, there never was a bad smell coming out of the bin, and the whole thing never attracted pests. It’s maybe worth a shot, Sarah?

Thank you very helpful. I will have to overcome my aversion to worms. Think I’ll give it a go. I imagine they are small ones?

I’ve had several wormeries and found them much more fun than a composting bin but they don’t take a lot of food waste at a time. Worms eat less in winter. I am happy that they eat my bank statements as well as banana skins and tea bags etc. I like being able to add fresh compost to the garden and the liquid made by it (watered down) to feed potted plants.

However it is worth learning to reduce your food waste first! If you shop in supermarkets you often can’t buy just one courgette or four carrots you end up with bags of vegetables. The more that you buy means the more that you have to manage. Buying less frees you from this and means that what you use is often fresher. You also learn to be more imaginative with your cooking. http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com is a good website to help you set up a canned and bottled store-cupboard to which you then add your fresh food, and recipes for using up leftovers and the difference between Best Before and Use By dates etc. You can also freeze many more things than you think.

The food waste bin collection is good for the collection of bones (but make stock out of that chicken carcase first – a slow cooker does this easily and means that I no longer have to belt downstairs when I smell the chicken stock starting to boil dry.) We’ve been using a FWB for years now and can use newspaper to wrap our food waste in as well as the compostable bags with the seedling logo so it is quite flexible. Councils who collect food waste separately seem to collect it weekly. To make life easy: Always keep food waste covered, don’t keep your outside food waste bin in the sun, and always rinse your FWB between collections so it doesn’t attract flies.

There is always something new to learn. We’ve eaten a lot of fresh ginger recently and I always used to peel it with a peeler or knife. I got fed up with this and just sliced it to go into a hot drink. Then last week I learnt that it is much easier to peel it with a teaspoon – if you want to peel it. It really is.

We have a weekly food recycling collection but have never needed to use it.

Apart from rarely wasting food, it either goes on the compost heap or gets fed to the wild life.

We produce almost zero food waste since we got a bokashi bin last year. (The exception is any large, hard to break bone, such as lamb shank). Instead it all goes directly to feed the life in our soil.

I think bokashi is wonderful, and wish I’d found out about it long ago. All indoors; no stink or slime in any bin; no fruit flies; a short batch time (a month in summer, two in winter); no waste of food energy or carbon (composting loses over 60%).

Bokashi accepts all food waste including meat, fish, dairy, bread and cooked leftovers. I read that some people use it pre-compost or pre-wormery for this reason, but to me they miss the point of direct soil food.

Despite some crass marketing, it isn’t magic. It is anaerobic fermentation in an airtight bin, by bacteria related to those that make yogurt and sauerkraut. The food is thus preserved in lactic acid, a natural bactericide, and is denatured in ways similar to early steps in our own digestions. The lactic acid breaks down in air, so when well mixed into soil, the preserve is ready to be eaten by all kinds of soil creatures. They do this remarkably quickly: in a couple of weeks the preserve is gone. The end result is a soil richer in life, life’s nutritious poo, and organic carbon.

Bokashi starter kits include two bins, one for filling up while the other is one fermenting. They can be pricey, but, because bokashi diverts costly landfill, starter kits are well subsidised by councils through a national scheme via one supplier (evengreener.com). The only ongoing cost is for bran that inoculates the food in the bin. I estimate just over 50p per month per not very wasteful person. Personally, I think councils should make that free too, given the money they’ll save.

When I look at the advantages, and the costs and troubles of equally serious composting with bins or worms, bokashi seems to me to be a no-brainer, potentially the only Which? Best Buy. I’d be interested to learn what you think.

There’s scope for community action here. Not only bulk-buying of the bran, but also mutual encouragement, and especially teaming up people without a garden who would love zero food waste and community gardens who would love to make richer soil. Why is it not rife, I wonder. The foreign name?

I was astonished at the figures for household food waste presented in the latest Which mag. We don’t have anything like the 750g pp weekly food waste.
We shop for fresh food about twice a week and plan main meals carefully. We only buy what we plan to eat. Our food waste consists of things like cherry pips and other fruit stones, fish bones and skin, melon skin etc. We are mortified if “uneaten” food has to be thrown out – we cannot afford the waste. If we have bought too much fruit we make a fresh fruit salad. We are careful to monitor the “use by” dates on longer term stored food and have started to buy foods in smaller packs such as flour which looses its properties in storage – cakes are very much better made with fresh flour.
We don’t plan breakfasts and lunches so precisely but just keep several options in the cupboard/fridge which are planned to be eaten over the next week or so.
Its not rocket science! How do people create the waste you describe?
Andy