The last eleven weeks have been spent gathering and presenting details, tips, and tricks about food waste and sustainability. The goal of this blog was and will be to provide digestible information promoting the reduction of one’s carbon footprint by leaning towards a more sustainable kitchen and understanding the many eco and social issues surrounding food. So now what?
Now that we’ve exposed our minds and expanded our knowledge, let’s review how we can make long-lasting, impactful change.
- Starting small. Transitioning into a more conscious and thoughtful relationship with food is intimidating, but there are many ways to slowly improve your food habits in a more sustainable way. One of the simplest ways to minimize food waste is to start your own backyard compost. It is an inexpensive project, as most of the components needed come from nature. This can significantly reduce the amount of food scraps that end up crowding landfills.
- Stepping up a little bit, let’s transition into sustainable shopping. Here, we can swap plastic/paper bags for reusable grocery bags. We can also shop primarily for fresh produce rather than packaged foods. Not only does this improve sustainability, but dietary needs as well! This will reduce intake of wasteful plastics.
- Transitioning into a primarily produce-filled diet, meal planning provides another way to shop responsibly and appropriately portion your meals. Starting the week with a plan of what foods you’ll need and correctly portioning out the items will ensure less food going bad and/or unused. It will also make your week less stressful (and expensive)!
- If meal planning is difficult a task for you, we’ve covered two highly sustainable meal and grocery delivery services: HelloFresh and Imperfect Foods. Both of these companies share the goal of reducing food waste and carry it out in different manors. HelloFresh targets proper portioning while Imperfect Foods tackles food waste directly by saving “ugly” items.
- Take on a challenge and see how many days you can go without producing food waste! Keep a log of what items keep you from reaching your goal and adjust their placement in your routine. Once you reach your goal, expand it. See how long you can go while producing the least amount of waste possible.
- Donate! If you have the means to get further involved, please consider checking out the linked non-profits we have covered. Though giving to non-profits do not directly influence your own food sustainability, it contributes to a wide-scale issue of waste and insecurity.
Please comment and reach out with your progress or with any questions you may have. I have been challenging myself throughout this writing process to see how little waste I can produce and I am happy to announce that I have made it 2 weeks with no waste in the kitchen! Food waste was never something prominent on my mind, but the more exposure I have had to this information the more conscious I have become. I hope this has been inspiring so far, and I am looking forward to continuing this journey together.
