Easy to Adopt Habits to Prevent Food Waste at Home

February 21, 2019 Updated: January 18, 2024

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with how to help when confronted with the massive problem of food waste. However, there are many doable shifts in habits that we can all adopt in our own kitchens that over time certainly make a difference!

Being passionate about reducing waste at home is practically a prerequisite for working at Lovin’ Spoonfuls, so who better to offer actionable changes than our staff? Here are some of our favorite tips that we invite you to try:

Freezing

Using the Whole Item

  • Use skins, peels and scraps to make broths.
  • If you have too many greens in the refrigerator, use them to make smoothies.
  • Rather than wasting kale stems, thinly slice them and mix them in salad. When using kale in a cooked dish, add the stems earlier in cooking to let them become tender before adding the leaves.
  • Never waste radish greens when purchased as a bunch. If the greens look good, use them in place of basil (or with basil) and blend together your favorite pesto recipe. Great with eggs, on pasta, or anywhere you might use pesto!
  • Use the entire broccoli stock. Cut it into small pencil width strips and cook it with the broccoli florets.
  • Google how to cook the stem or how to use the “entire (item name)” prior to throwing out parts of an item you don’t know how to use.

Keeping Food Fresh

Planning and Tracking

We also encourage everyone to carry this mindset over to meal service and clean-up by switching out paper towels and paper napkins for cloth and eating with reusable plates and flatware whenever possible, even when on the go.

Once indoctrinated to these types of changes and the mindset of preventing waste, we bet other ecologically friendly changes will follow.

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