Last week I chaired a food wastage forum – Whatever Happened to Waste Not Want Not – as part of the Sydney Festival. It was a joint initiative of Target100, a beef and lamb industry sustainability program, and EPA’s Love Food Hate Waste program (I’m the ambassador to both). The forum raised so many points, the aim of which was to encourage everyone in the audience to reduce their waste by 50 per cent.
A few factoids for you:
* By 2075, there will be 3 billion more mouths on the planet to feed, requiring 70 per cent more food than is available now. We can’t feed the planet now…what the hell are we going to do?
* The BIGGEST environmental issue facing the planet right now? According to many experts it’s food wastage.
* More than 50 per cent of all food produced doesn’t make it to our gobs. It’s wasted at the farm, in storage, transport, at the supermarket and then in our homes.
* The BIGGEST wasters in that cycle? Consumers. Yep. We toss out 20-50 per cent of our food each week. The average Australian household wastes $1036 worth of food a year.
* And the WORST offenders? 18-24 year-olds and those earning more than $100K a year. The young and the rich!
* Australian farmers, in particular meat farmers, have some of the most sustainable practices in the world. A meat-inclusive diet (as opposed to a vegetarian one) is the most sustainable here in Australia. I’ve touched on why here, but will be posting more on this soon.
At the forum, we asked everyone to try cutting their food wastage by 50 per cent. Totally reasonable. The European Parliament has resolved to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2020. About 60 per cent of all food waste is entirely avoidable.
And we asked people in the audience to share the tips (from us on stage and their own) on Twitter on the hashtag #wastenot. The hashtag #wastenot went viral, and trended in Australia, and there are some fantastic tips on the tag. I’ve shared some here, but for more, simply do a little read through on the hashtag.
For more tips, here’s how to eat your scraps.
Here’s a few suggestions on what to do with beetroot leaves.
For a ton of extra tips, why not check out my love food hate waste post.
Got leftover herbs? I wrote a list of ten things to do with them here.
Infographics from Lunchalot. And to find out how the stats are calculated, go to FoodWise.
Infographics clearly labelled as Mother Jones’ can be found here.
Thank you for this article Sarah. I made a crock pot soup out of old veggies in my fridge last night! This is something I never would’ve done before reading your blog. It actually helps me not binge, save money, and eat healthier when I focus on the food I already have at home.
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Great tips Sarah – thank you!
I often use saggy veggies in omelettes for breakfast, great way to use up stuff that is a bit past using in a salad!
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Hooray for conscious consumerism!
Although I find it super hard to believe that 18 – 24 year olds are the worst offenders. I remember when I was 18. I was far more interested in partying and drinking than food shopping, and my fridge usually contained mustard and milk at the most!
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January 21st, 2013 at 2:27 pm
and custard powder!! guuugh, but it was filling, comforting, cheap and went a long way, haha – rest was spent on beer!!
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January 23rd, 2013 at 6:36 pm
And 2 minute noodles!
I seriously doubt you would find much fresh stuff in the fridges of the “broke uni student /first fulltime job” age bracket. I’m calling shenanigans on that little factoid.
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January 25th, 2013 at 11:59 am
At the end of the week all my saggy veg. and leftovers become ‘ fridge clean fritata’. Great for continuously hungry teenager and pretty much a no cook weekend.
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thank you for this important post sarah. i like the tip: ‘plan meals for what you need to use up’ … seems obvious but sometimes we need reminders!
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Our fridge died last week! Tried to save as much as we could with cool bags and ice blocks in the sink but it was really sad to chuck the stuff that just didn’t make it. Never normally happens at our house! I agree with the veggies in an omlette, or fritatta type thing. I googled once how to freeze celery and came up with frugalliving.com. haha. It was worth it though. Now I always blanche and freeze veggies ready for the next soup etc.
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Yesterday my boyfriend and I were going to buy a margherita pizza to share and add our own toppings (grilled mushrooms, pancetta and zucchini). He came back empty handed as there was a 40 minute wait (bear in mind these are real pizzas, from a wood oven- popular when it’s snowing).
I took a peek in the fridge and found a tetrapak of tomato puree that had been opened a week ago and just added that to the veggies with some herbs and olive oil. I knew we didn’t have any real pasta, but remembered I had some gluten free stuff from when I suspected I couldn’t eat wheat (now I just eat more rice).
Before we knew it we had a full meal cooked with ingredients we already had when I had been thinking we needed a pizza on a Sunday night because we had nothing in the fridge.
IT was very satisfying knowing we’d saved 17 swiss francs (yeah, food is expensive in Switzerland!), especially because it was pretty damn tasty.
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Thank you Sarah!! We need to spread this word more! Sustainable food is one of the biggest environmental challenges we face (if not THE biggest, as you mention). Sadly there is a lot of misinformation out there about what is sustainable (e.g. vegetarianism or not) and finding answers is difficult and largely depends on where you live etc (e.g. some fish species can be harvested sustainably in one location and yet be completely unsustainable elsewhere!). Looking forward to hearing more from you on this very important issue
Love you blog!
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“Australian farmers, in particular meat farmers, have some of the most sustainable practices in the world. A meat-inclusive diet (as opposed to a vegetarian one) is the most sustainable here in Australia. I’ve touched on why here, but will be posting more on this soon.”
Really, Sarah? Isn’t this one of the bogus facts you have been fed by MLA? Though, I don’t disagree that Australian farming practices are better than those of a lot of other nations.
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January 22nd, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Sarah, I absolutely adore you and agree with 95% of what you write and promote. In fact reading your blog is part of my morning routine.
But even as an omnivore myself, I cannot comprehend how you can possibly state something like this, that am eat inclusive diet is the most sustainable in Australia. It really shocks and disappoints me to be honest.
I believe you must be comparing the diet of the most sustainable conscious meat eater versus the diet of the least conscious vegetarian???
Can you honestly say, that if you cut out all meat in your diet, without replacing it with anything (conceivable) that it wouldn’t be more sustainable?
It would appear to be a no brainier.
I look forward to your future articles that will address this.
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January 23rd, 2013 at 12:06 am
I wonder (1) on what she bases such a claim and (2) where she got the evidence from?
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January 23rd, 2013 at 8:13 pm
I guess what needs to be clarified as to what diets are actually being compared here. If you grow your own food and solely eat your own produce, that is more sustainable than even the most sustainable meat diet, even if you raise and slaughter your own meat.
Without clarification of the comparison, the claim seems ludicrous.
Although, at the end of the day, unless you are doing a very biased comparison, there is no way it can be argue used that a meat based diet is the most sustainable.
Sarah isa meat eater and probably the majority of her readers are too, self included, but pushing a line like this rather than encouraging making sustainable choices seems either very under-researched (unlikely), with another agenda (also unlikely, Sarah is very open about all of her sponsorship) or just unwilling to accept that meat is not the most environmentally friendly choice?
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January 23rd, 2013 at 5:32 pm
The author lost me when she claimed meat farmers are some of the most sustainable farmers around. It’s been proven that is a myth time and time again.
It takes 3000litres of water per 150grams of steak, as per the Commonwealth of Australia report on the greenhouse issues and how to be more sustainable in a rental situation in 2005. Yes, my source is a bit dated, but its accurate.
I’m a meat eater, but please, don’t give me stuff I can’t in good conscience swallow.
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January 26th, 2013 at 1:08 pm
I call BS on your assertion that it takes 3000 litres of water to produce 150g of steak or edible meat…
If a cow weighs 400kg, then after slaughter the carcass will be about 200kg then when it goes to the butcher it looses about one third in fat and bone. So a 400kg liveweight animal should give you about 140kg of edible meat.
140kg meat = approx 935 x 150g portions. 935 x 3000 litres = 2,805,000 litres of water per beast! Seriously, I doubt whether a cow/steer or whatever would drinkk that much water in its entire lifetime lifetime! Even if they drank 200 litres of water per day, it would take almost 40 years to drink 2,000,000 litres. I would hate to be eating that meat!
You’re the myth maker.
PS I note that you said ‘steak’ but nobody slaughters a whole beast just for it’s steak.
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January 30th, 2013 at 2:16 pm
Julie M: To my knowledge, figures that show the number of liters of water required to produce meat aren’t referring solely to the water that the animal itself consumes, rather to the water used in the meat production. Consider water used to clean factory floors/equipment, wash trucks used for transport, water the fields used to grow the grass/grain used to feed the animal…
[...] who?” attitude, but there have been a lot of stories going around both news media and the blogosphere about food waste. More than half of the food produced in the world goes to waste. There will always [...]
I can’t buy into the ‘meat eaters are so green’ argument either. However I have to declare my long term avoidance of it. Anyway, back on topic – I’m no cook. At least, nothing pretty, but it tastes good! I’m awfully good at one particular un-recipe we call “Leftovers Delight”. Whatever it is, is dictated by your own fridges, gardens, herbs and shelves, but it usually goes in a bowl, gets devoured by the household, and we rarely throw food out. Just invent! Lisa
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Many top environmentalists choose to eat meat for environmental reasons. Indeed when I began my academic life in ecology and environmental science I switched from being a long term vegetarian to a meat eater entirely for environmental reasons. It is a complex topic and not one someone can prove or disprove with ‘facts’ about water consumption/methane etc etc. sustainability is very broad . Hopefully Sarah can address some of that here
For everyone to read about.
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[...] up, read this – a great wrap of the Waste Not Want Not Sydney Festival event last week by Sarah Wilson, [...]
Since I’ve become more conscious of not wasting food, I find I now eat out less and get very cranky when dining out plans are made when I’ve already defrosted food for dinner
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Here’s a Waste Less tip I discovered by accident- store opened potato chips in the fridge- they stay crisp as long as you fridge them! I don’t even seal mine- just roll the excess packaging around itself
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This post has really stuck with me, so I made sure to link to it on my own blog (I wrote a post about how to grocery shop Paleo-style): http://choosingtoeat.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/im-all-lost-in-the-supermarket/
Thanks, Sarah!!
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