As I’ve mentioned in each of my #SAVEITSUNDAY posts, we Americans waste a lot of our food: this food waste has devastating consequences to our environment and our wallets. In past posts I have mainly focused on ways to store your food at home so you can waste less (Glad’s Protection Pointers have been very helpful to me), but today I want to do something a little different. I want to talk about 5 ways you can reduce food waste before you even bring your food home.
Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Glad in conjunction with their #SAVEITSUNDAY program. With #SAVEITSUNDAY, Glad hopes to educate the public about the consequences of food waste, and I am proud they’ve asked me to be a part of the program. I am being compensated to share my #SAVEITSUNDAY experiences; all opinions are 100% my own.
Food waste is a huge issue around the world: here in the US, the average family throws away at least 25% of the food and beverages they buy each year. Food waste has potentially devastating environmental consequences: food represents the single largest component of municipal solid waste reaching landfills. Food waste eventually converts to methane, a greenhouse gas implicated in global warming.
Food waste also means many of us are basically throwing away an awful lot of money. The annual cost of food waste in America is in the billions! On average, families in this country are tossing 200 pounds of food in the trash and saying “bye bye” to $1,500 per year because they don’t use everything they purchase.
Glad wants to help us get a handle on our food waste. By showing us how to change habits, such as the ways in which we wrap and store our food, the things we buy may last significantly longer and we will waste less. This will allow us to help preserve the environment AND save our hard-earned cash.
I readily admit that I am no “pro” when it comes to addressing food waste (my fellow #SAVEITSUNDAY bloggers, Kristin and Mavis, know far more about this topic because they blog about it more regularly). In fact, I’ve always sort of relied on composting as a way to feel okay about some of the things I buy that don’t get used. Plus I have chickens, so they get plenty of stuff, too (here they are eating some organic baby greens that were past their prime).
But composting and having chickens shouldn’t be an excuse for being lazy…for me not storing my food as best as I can. So I took the #SAVEITSUNDAY Pledge so I can learn how to do better in the food storage department.
My partnership with Glad means I’ll be posting monthly about my efforts to cut down on food waste in my home. This month, I’ve been focusing on bringing a recipe-driven shopping list with me every time I go to the store. When I have this type of shopping list, I am more likely to avoid buying things I won’t use. I’ve also been trying to shop every Sunday morning and I’ve been putting Glad’s food protection suggestions to use as soon as I get my food home. When you prep and protect your food as soon as you get home, it keeps fresher for longer.