Food Waste as a Way to Save the Planet and Know Yourself Better

While saving money and maybe being grumpy

About once a month I write about how you can take climate action. Past posts live on my website.

Did you know cutting back on food waste is one of the best and easiest ways you can help the planet? I didn’t.

Throwing away fewer wrinkled carrots and rotten food has the potential to add up to 25-30 percent of the total emissions reductions we need to reduce emissions.

To quote Project Drawdown,

“It’s because we as individuals and households are a part of a broader economic system currently reliant on fossil fuels, from the food we buy, to the electricity we use, to the buildings we live in. While the vast majority of global emissions (70–75 percent) can be reduced directly by the decisions of those who run businesses, utilities, buildings, and governments, our choices as consumers, energy users, tenants, and voters have direct impact in their own right and can affect those decisions by sending signals across the system. So rather than being laden with blame and guilt, we should be owning our power to make change.”

But here’s the truth and where I get grumpy—

I don’t always want to embrace the truth my individual actions matter because it means changing. I like my lifestyle the way it is thank you very much. And I don’t like that I have to change my life while big oil and gas keep doing their nasty nihilistic crapola. But knowing I’m making a difference against the biggest threat me, my husband, my kids, and everybody and everything I love faces makes it easier to change.

Still, I want to say if the idea of thinking about food waste makes you grumpy, you are seen.

Here’s a couple more reasons why not throwing away food matters.

• Less methane! Because when all those salad greens and broccoli you bought that didn’t get eaten decay in the landfill, they burp out a whole bunch of nasty methane. Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. This means methane gets us hot faster, which when it comes to sex is a good thing, but not so much when it comes to climate change.

• Less overall resources wasted! Did you know roughly 1/3 of food is never eaten? And that the U.S. wastes enough food to equal the GDP of France sans all those mouth-watering baguettes? This also means all those resources - fuel, water, labor, fertilizer, etc. - are wasted too, producing an environmental impact for nothing.

• Eventually, there will be less forests cut down! Because nobody needs that land to grow food that isn’t being eaten so forests can thrive and sequester carbon.

But what does any of this have to do with knowing yourself better?

Perhaps we waste food because we aspire to be someone we aren’t and then feel guilty we didn’t eat all those salad greens again which strangely only makes us buy more the next time we are at the store — I’ll change!

Perhaps you buy food as an act of love for the people you cook for but they don’t eat what you make. Still, you keep trying and keep throwing out food. Or you want to be a family that eats at home but you aren’t but again, you keep hoping you will be. Maybe looking at your food waste helps accept the reality of your life right now.

Or maybe you throw out food because you want to have people over but you never do. It’s too much work or anxious making. What if you started the Left-Over Sunday Supper Club? Everybody brings something they made from whatever would have gone south in the fridge but before it does — we don’t want this to be the Food Posioining Supper Club. You get community and a meal!

What if less food waste and less angst was possible when you ask with kind curiosity, “Why and when does food get wasted in my life?”

That’s where a lot of my food waste comes from - pretending I will, for example, prep roast veggies on Sunday for the week when all I want to do is write my novel. I’m getting better at accepting this so there are fewer wilted sweet potatoes in our compost.

Cutting back on food waste could be an act of self-knowledge. An extra benefit to saving money and helping the world.

Here’s a few more practical ideas if the whole self-knowledge thing feels silly:

• Buy more hardy dense produce that lasts longer. More apples instead of berries. Cauliflower instead of lettuce.

• Prepare your produce when you get home. Roast your broccoli and potatoes and beets (just because I’m not going to doesn’t mean you can’t) and then you have cooked ingredients that don’t spoil as fast and you can toss with rice or top with an egg or put in a bag and munch on at work.

• Freeze stuff before it goes bad. We always order peaches from a friend in the summer but we can’t eat a flat of peaches fast enough so I cut them up and freeze them. You can freeze half a loaf of bread or tortillas. Even leftover rice - just freeze it before it sits around for more than a day.

• Participate in your local composting program if your city or town has one or compost yourself if you have room. If you don’t make enough waste to pay for a bin yourself, ask a neighbor who participates (you know because they have that bin at the curb) if you can add your little bit to theirs. It’s a great way to connect with your neighbors.

I know doing this doesn’t feel like much in the face of the daily horrible environmental news but that’s part of what the gloom and doomers want us to think — that our efforts don’t matter. But the research shows what we do matters!

Try to talk about what you are doing with friends and family. Be a climate influencer. It helps change others without you needing to lecture.

For more ideas on cutting back on food waste, check out this Wire Cutter article.

For my favorite climate substack, check out Heated.

In the comments, share how you reduce food waste. I bet you have great ideas. As always be kind to each other.