How to save $3800 a year by eliminating your food waste

A shopping error is costing Aussies millions of dollars – but there’s an easy solution to make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Have you ever hosted a barbecue and chucked away leftover food? It’s not a crime but maybe it should be.

Throwing away one burger wastes as much water as having a 90-minute shower. A few wasted burgers could undo the hard work of having those recommended four-minutes showers.

This isn’t just a barbecue problem either. One in five shopping bags of food end up in the bin per year. That’s $3800 worth of food for each household.

Not so fun fact: Potatoes and bananas are the most wasted food items in Australia. Approximately 37,000 tonnes of bananas are discarded from farms every year.

While a lot of waste comes from manufacturing and production, 34 per cent of the 7.3 millions tonnes of food waste per year comes from Aussie households.

So what can we all do to stop this shameful waste of food and precious resources?

1. Shop smart

Before you go to the supermarket create a rough plan of what you’ll cook for the week and write a list of what you need for that. Don’t get tempted by bulk-buying things that are on offer. If it’s not on the list, you don’t need it!

Write a shopping list and weekly dinner plan to stop food waste.

2. Store food properly

Invest in some big airtight boxes that you can store salad and vegetables in while in the crisper. Salad leaves in particular need to be able to breathe so don’t squish them under anything.

Salad and veggies will last longer if stored in boxes in the fridge.

Store vegetables separate to fruit – it will stop them going off as fast. For example, did you know avocados, apples and kiwifruit all produce natural ethylene gas that is used to ripen bananas? If you store these separately to bananas then they will last longer.

Also keep dried food in airtight boxes in the cupboard to stop them being infiltrated by insects or moisture.

Dry foods can be kept in airtight containers in the cupboard.

3. Skip doing a ‘big shop’

Challenge yourself to only spending the bare minimum on shopping one week and see what you can create with what you have. Pairing that four-bean mix you’ve had in the cupboard for ages with that forgotten box of couscous could create the best meal you’ve ever had. You’ll also save money doing this too – win, win.

4. Truly understand food expiration dates

Foods are labelled with either ‘use by’ or ‘best before’ dates and understanding these could save you a fortune. According to Food Standards Australia, only food with a ‘use by’ date must be eaten before a certain time for health or safety reasons.

You can still eat foods for a while after the best before date as they should be safe but they may have lost some quality. Foods that have a best before date can legally be sold after that date provided the food is fit for human consumption.

5. Freeze food for later

If you bulk make a chilli for lunches but get sick of it halfway through the week, portion it up into lunches and put it in the freezer.

Just take the package out of the freezer the night before you need it and by the next morning it will have defrosted ready for lunch.

Don’t let food go off just because you’re tired of it. That curry you hate this week will taste really good in three weeks’ time!

Portion up leftover food into lunches to eat later on.

6. Compost, compost, compost

Did you know that it takes 50 litres of water to produce one orange? Then when you consider Australians throw away one in five shopping bags of food, the wasted water is painful to think about.

Then food rotting in landfill produces methane, which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. At least by composting food scraps and waste, the methane emissions are significantly reduced.

A compost bin can be used to collect fruit and veg scraps, grass clippings, cardboard that can’t be recycled (such as soiled pizza boxes) and many, many other things. Composting is magic! Either put your compost in the green waste bin or take it to a community garden.

Riah Matthews is the commissioning editor for news.com.au