Just breathe. You can do this and there are lots of resources to help!

Leftover food and scraps turning into amazing dirt is just a fun and simple way of seeing science and our ecosystem in work without much input. If you leave food out it and it stays moist, it will rot. Period. Pretty cool in the eyes of microbiology… maybe not so fantastic in the fridge. Even with as much as I love the smell of a good compost pile, it really isn’t where to start when it comes to waste reduction.

As Mark Schlereth says, it’s time to “pull a thumb” (instead of point a finger) and take a look at how the food waste is being generated. Evaluating our eating and buying tendencies helps take small bites out of the waste problem. Don’t be surprised if the effects of doing these are seen in your wallet (as in more money in it), your time (as in you get more of it), and a noticeably decrease in your garbage as well!

I love to read, but bullet lists are my absolute fav… so here are some points to get you thinking about decreasing the waste. Email if you have other ways to share and I’ll add to the list!

• Stop buying ‘individual serving sizes.’ Buy bulk. Use reusable containers or bags to make personalized serving sizes.
• Pay attention to portions. Your stomach is the size of your fist. If you eat slower and chew thoroughly your stomach has time to communicate with your brain that it is full. Listen to it.
• If you don’t like eating leftovers, then stop making more than can be eaten at one serving. Keep a fruit or vegetable (like carrots/broccoli) available for anyone that is still hungry after dinner.
• Try freezing leftovers as individual servings that can be packed as a lunch or thawed for a quick homemade ‘freezer dinner.’ If you don’t like how the food thaws it goes in the compost so no harm no foul.
• Look up “Leftover Recipes.” You might be amazed at how creative you can become re-purposing a dinner into something new!
• Make a grocery list and only buy what is on the list. Especially for perishable goods.
• Before putting away groceries in the fridge, put the perishable goods that are still hanging out in a spot that designates them as “eat me first.” I move everything from right to left (because our fridge opens on the left side, so this puts the older food first in your line of site when the door is opened.) So the left crisper is the ‘eat me’ crisper and the right is the ‘oh good the grocery order got delivered.’ I live by these Tupperware Fridgesmart containers because the crispers can’t hold all the veg we eat.
• Wash and prep everything possible before it goes in the fridge. Yep, it sucks to do it, but not only does this cut down on meal prep time, it reinforces what you purchased in the ol’ memory bank.
• Are certain items always ending up in the compost instead of a stomach? Stop buying it. It sounds simple, but getting out of the habit of buying food that we “want” to be eating but don’t helps reduce food waste (and sometimes expenses!).

Other posts will discuss ways to reduce waste in general, but start by noticing what is being composted. The first step to food waste reduction is feeding people! Check out the EPA site for their food waste scale and more info.

Additional resources for reducing food waste:

• EPA preventing food waste at home
• Tips from the FDA
• ReFed.org
• Try Misfits Market or Imperfect Foods : get a discount on food AND help keep it out of the landfill 🙂
  • Note that Misfits Market and Imperfect foods are now working together… we have used both and now out of simplicity stick with Misfits ~ try it, try it, you might like it!

Facts are stubborn little things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

John Adams

It seems only fitting that the first post be why everyone should reduce food waste and if the only thing available is composting, then by all means start there. Waste reduction actually starts way before composting, if you are interested in seeing how to start at the top check out this blog on making less food waste.

First, landfills were not meant to house organic materials. I don’t mean USDA stamped organic. We are talking about carbon based things. When we humans put carbon based, aka compostable, biodegradable, or organic materials, into the landfill we first wrap them in plastic bags via the trash collectors instructions. What happens when a human puts their head in a plastic bag (yes, there are warnings about this on everything! Don’t do this.) the oxygen gets consumed and then the human suffocates. Here comes a mini-biology lesson, stay with me it’s worth it: 

Humans suffocate because we don’t have another way to perform respiration. Cellular respiration, which is what the oxygen we breathe is being used for, is how our individual little amazing cells take the food we eat and turn it into energy. To do that in the best way, it uses the molecule oxygen. Fancy-shmancy termed as aerobic respiration. Yes, every biochem person out there is rolling their eyes because this is a drastic oversimplification. However, for the the point of this discussion, just remember that oxygen is needed for our human cells to make energy. If they don’t get it, our cells stall out and we die. It may seem like I got off track, but I didn’t… now back to landfills and organic materials: 

Imagine the snazzy little microbes happily consuming the carbon based material in your trash, when the oxygen in the plastic bag you put it in runs out. Do the microbes die? No. These little guys have been around the block a time or two and have different, albeit less effective, ways to respire. The microbes will happily switch to any respiration method to avoid death. These methods are called anaerobic respiration and anoxic respiration… both names indicate that oxygen is not present. When a microbe does it this way, an end product is methane. Hence, the dreaded methane production and potential fire risk in landfills. 

Now, you may not like to read this, but methane production IS NOT THE LANDFILL’S FAULT. Methane production is caused by humans putting organic materials into plastic bags in landfills, and that is the person filling the garbage bag’s fault. That, my friend, is one of the main reasons as a human and a consumer of goods, you and I need to stop filling our landfills with organic materials.

Ok, so you don’t give a crap about landfills and methane… Here are a few shot-gun approach reasons that should be self explanatory.

We are losing nutrients (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, etc.) in the landfill. Liners on the landfills prevent toxic leachate from escaping, but also any water soluble nutrients from reentering it’s designated cycle of life —- remember back to elementary school… Nitrogen cycle or carbon cycle ring a bell?

Landfills are not interminable. That’s a fun word for endless. We keep having to find new places (that no one wants to live by) to fill with our trash. By reducing our trash we will need less land to hold it.