According to a recent article in the Financial Post, each year, about 40% of the food produced by Canadians ends up in the landfill. That exceeds the amount eaten in Canadian restaurants and is an estimated $27 billion dollars. Wowza.
While businesses and grocery stores are big culprits, consumers are also not without blame. I know that I have let things go bad in my fridge and have been forced to chuck them.
In a few of my previous posts I outlined how energy intensive it is to produce and transport food, and just imagine all that energy going to waste in spoiled food. Sure, it is biodegradable and compostable, but that is still a lot of good food going to waste.
Wasting food, either by choice or by accident really undermines the ecological and environmental sacrifices made to produce that food and bring it to our plates/fridges. By letting the food spoil or wasting it, we waste all the energy needed to farm, raise, transport store, process and maybe even cook the food!
This is a simple one to fix and is a money saver, so let's stop wasting food!
There are a number of things you can do:
1) Don't buy or take more than you can eat - this is especially important for fresh produce that has a limited shelf life.
2) Keep stock of what's in your fridge and make sure you consume something before it is too late
3) Like my mom always told me -clean your plate!
4)A lot of grocery stores sell bruised/ funny looking produce for really cheap. My local produce market sells bags of fruit/veggies that aren't exactly prime for 99 cents - it's a great deal and the food is still good! I also feel that I can justify buying non-local produce (ex. oranges) if I am saving them from the dumpster
5) I haven't done this yet, but I have heard about it and maybe if you are feeling adventurous, try being a freegan!
If we all stop wasting food and stop taking our fortunate easy-access to food for granted we can really make a difference here! So, my challenge for today is to stop wasting food!
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