Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew:
Tips for a More Sustainable Future
As Covid-19 erupted into this world to change everything we thought we knew, a strange phenomenon began happening in supermarkets across the globe. The shelves were empty. And the people panicked.
In my family home, the response to this weird and unsettling time of empty supermarket shelves involved the development of a new ritual. Each Wednesday, when my mum returns home from the weekly food shop, she spends some time apologetically announcing which items she failed to get this time. For a long time it was tinned tomatoes. We also went through a spell of “no light brown sugar, again.” Yeast apparently ceased to exist for several weeks, too. Risotto rice- extremely hard to come by. This was all very strange at first, but now we know that this is just what people like to call “the new normal.”
When everyone began talking of this “new normal,” I’m sure I was not the only person to be questioning what on earth was so “normal” about the way we lived before. In a pre-Covid world, I used to be able to walk into a supermarket at any time of day, in any location, and I was able to buy pretty much whatever I wanted. We, in the Global North in particular, normalised abundance. It has somehow become a part of our culture to have a constant supply of food. The stockpiling we saw at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic is exemplary of how complacent we have become with this reality. The prospect of food shortages was so unusual, terrifying, and abhorrent to us that we actually caused our own shortages through vast overconsumption. That is how comfortable we are with buying more than we need, and how uncomfortable we are with the prospect of having to do without.
I don’t think I’m alone in finding this pretty odd, and perhaps even a little troubling. But what is far more disturbing about this culture of consumption and abundance is the resulting waste. Of all of the food produced in the world, a third is wasted every year. That is like each of us going to the shops every week, coming away with three large shopping bags filled with food, dropping one in the car park and just leaving it there to rot. If you saw someone doing this, you’d be shocked. You’d probably say something to them, yet we aren’t talking about this issue.
“Of all of the food produced in the world, a third is wasted every year. That is like each of us going to the shops every week, coming away with three large shopping bags filled with food, dropping one in the car park and just leaving it there to rot.”
The truth is that food waste just isn’t something we consider to be much of a problem. Maybe your gran used to say things to you about how you had to eat every last morsel on your plate because “some poor wain oot there would be greetin’ to have a meal like that!” That’s what my feisty wee Glaswegian granny used to say to me, anyway. But other than that, it isn’t something we really put much thought into. Many of us don’t care at all. Some of us care a little, but that feeling doesn’t go much further than simply saying, “It’s a shame to waste this,” as we chuck something else in the bin. We feel bad, but we don’t feel that bad.
Food waste is so much more than “a shame.” It is an absolute injustice. This is something that has become quite interesting to me recently, as the conversation surrounding climate change has grown louder. There is a real hunger for change when it comes to the environment. We are beginning to see people out protesting and on strike for climate justice. There is outcry over the use of plastic straws and takeaway cups. There seems to be a message that is spreading across many parts of the world: We Must Do Something. Yet, a huge part of the issue is lying in our own fridges, at the bottom of our cupboards, and in the rubbish bins sitting in the corner of our kitchens, and we aren’t talking about it.
When food is thrown out, it decomposes. When it decomposes without access to oxygen, which is what happens when food goes to a landfill, it releases methane into the air. Methane is a greenhouse gas which traps heat within the earth’s atmosphere and creates a “greenhouse effect,” allowing warm energy from the sun to pass into the atmosphere which is then unable to escape, causing a rise in global temperatures. In this way, the food we are throwing out is massively contributing to climate change. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S. That seems like a problem we should be striving to solve.
“In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the U.S.”
I’m sure many people would respond to this by saying that food can be recycled, through anaerobic respiration plants or composting, where it can be turned into other useful resources instead of being left to rot and emit harmful gases. This is true, but it is not so simple. In many areas, food cannot be easily recycled due to local authority waste policies (or lack thereof) and the inaccessibility of composting. Recycling food is also a pretty inefficient means of tackling this issue; even if we did recycle all of the food we waste, this would not solve the problem.
The actual food waste itself and the harmful gases it emits, represent only a fraction of the real damage to the planet. The energy and resources used to produce and transport food also contribute to increased emissions. Moreover, a number of important natural resources are used to produce food, like water and land space. The use of these resources has an enormous impact on the planet; for example, land often has to be cleared in order to grow food, causing deforestation, meaning that a number of important species lose their natural habitats. This means that important functions carried out by nature, like cleaning the air of greenhouse gases and water regulation, are lost, and the health of the planet declines, as a result. This damage is completely unnecessary when it occurs, in order to produce food that doesn’t even get eaten. To put this into context, a land area larger than China is used to grow food that is never eaten every single day. This level of production is not sustainable, nor is it logical or justifiable.
“To put this into context, a land area larger than China is used to grow food that is never eaten every single day.”
But, you can see how easy it is to waste food. In the U.K. alone, we throw away 25 million slices of bread each day. There are also around 27 million households in the U.K. So, every household throws away about 1 slice, and it doesn’t seem like a big deal. It adds up to something pretty horrifying, but on an individual basis, it seems inconsequential: it is “a shame,” but we’ll do it anyway. This is the attitude we must strive to change.
This all comes back to our culture of consumption and abundance. Overbuying does not concern us. Throwing the odd food item in the bin is common - a non-event. We are ignorant and indifferent to the effort which goes into producing food. We believe that food is pretty much always going to be available to us. As a society, we are failing to view food as something valuable and something to be grateful for, and the impact of this is frightening.
This whole issue is far harder to swallow when we bring it back to a human level. The environmental impact of food waste can be difficult to understand or appreciate. The human impact should not be. It perhaps goes without saying that our gross overconsumption of food, and the amount of food that gets discarded without much thought, is so much more than an environmental injustice. About 1 billion people in the world go to bed hungry each night. We could feed all of them with less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the U.S. and Europe alone. It seems we have not only a consumption problem, but also a distribution problem. This is pretty disturbing and also pretty complex. There are a number of different reasons why food poverty exists, and it can feel like an overwhelming problem that we as individuals alone cannot resolve in any meaningful way. But, the simple point is this: food is abundant to some, but to others, it is not available to all. Our failure to value food is not just unsustainable. It is cruel. That is something that we, as individuals, can change.
“About 1 billion people in the world go to bed hungry each night. We could feed all of them with less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the U.S. and Europe alone.”
Over half of all food waste is happening at home. We are a huge part of this issue. That means that we can be a huge part of the solution. Don’t let this demoralise you or make you feel guilty; let it excite you. This is an environmental issue that we do not have to protest about. We do not need to wait for governments or large companies to listen to us and make changes. The changes we are awaiting can begin in our own homes.
Below are some tips on how we, as individuals, can help to fight food waste. The severity of this issue is pretty clear. It is scarily unsustainable. It is upsettingly unfair. There is no justification for the attitude we have developed towards food. But we can and should use this knowledge to empower us. These are our changes to make.
Tips to Combat Food Waste
1. PLAN AHEAD – try to put a little bit of time each week into planning your meals, and write a shopping list bearing in mind what you will actually use in order to make those meals. This can actually be made really fun – I love to rummage through my cookbooks and pick some recipes I think look yummy. You can also then look at the ingredients lists for these, turn to the index of the book and see which other recipes use the same ingredients, so that way you are more likely to use everything you buy.
2. THINK BEFORE YOU BUY – don’t fall for the good deals. When you write your list, stick to it, and only buy things that you will actually eat. It can be nice to get experimental and try new things, but try to make sure that your new and exciting purchases will actually get eaten before you put them in your shopping bag. It can also be worth having a look at whether any fresh ingredients you are looking to buy, such as vegetables, can also be bought frozen. This can minimise the chances of food going bad before you’ve had a chance to eat it.
3. KNOW YOUR DATES – when you buy things from the shops, and when you meal plan, have a little look at the expiration dates of the items you have bought to plan around which things need to be eaten and when. This is a really simple way of making sure things don’t go bad before you’ve had a chance to enjoy them. It can even help to stack your cupboards and fill your fridge in some sort of order of when things need to be eaten – things that have a longer life can go at the back, and things that need to be eaten soon at the front. Otherwise, it is also good to be a little flexible with your expiration dates. I’m not encouraging you to eat food that has gone bad or that might make you unwell, please don’t do that! But, it is good to have a look at what is “best before” and what is “use by.” If it is a “best before” item, you can eat it past the given date. It may not be as fresh, but often it will still be perfectly edible; just give it a smell, or a taste, to check that it is alright. A “use by” item usually should not be consumed after the given date, although I tend to see if it passes the “does it look, smell and taste okay” test with these things too if it has only been a day or two. This is worth doing as well to avoid throwing out perfectly edible food.
4. LOOK IN THE FRIDGE AND GOOGLE IT – before you decide you have no food in your kitchen, have a good look at what is left in the cupboards and fridge first. We all sometimes find ourselves with some items in the fridge or in the cupboards that are needing to be used up but that we’re not quite sure how to use, so we just ignore them and decide there is no food left. Try your best to use what you already have, whether that is some sad looking carrots, some brown bananas, or some random vegetables or tins. You might be reluctant to do this if you aren’t sure how to cook them or don’t know how to make them taste good, but it is always a good idea to simply turn to the internet and Google it! I promise you that just typing in “carrot recipes” or “chickpea recipes” can turn out some absolute treats. You can also look up your leftover ingredients in the indexes of any cookbooks you might have. This can be really fun whilst also helping you to make the most of the food you already have in your home. It is also good to be flexible when using these recipes – if you don’t have everything that the recipe lists, that’s okay! It will almost definitely turn out nicely even if you are missing a few things, or you can also Google what alternatives might work for certain things you are missing. If none of the recipes you are seeing take your fancy, try to get creative yourself. Lots of fruit can be tossed in a blender to make a nice smoothie; veg can be roasted and blended up with other ingredients to make hummus; many tinned items can be thrown together with veg and spices to make a hearty salad or a lovely stew. Just using what you have can still make a very tasty meal, and it can also get quite creative and fun.
5. LOVE YOUR LEFTOVERS – if you have any leftovers, eat them! It really is that simple. Lots of things actually taste even better the day after they’ve been cooked, like curries and stews, when the spices have had even more time to work their magic.
6. THE FREEZER IS YOUR BEST FRIEND – there are so many things that can last longer if frozen. Bread can easily be kept in the freezer and it lasts for months, and it is also easy to defrost or can simply be put straight in the toaster from frozen. Many leftovers can also be placed in freezer bags and kept for at least 3 months in the freezer. Not only can this help you to avoid waste, but it also means that when you are feeling a bit more lazy or can’t be bothered cooking, you have meals already waiting for you!
7. SHARE – if you have something that you aren’t going to eat, chances are there is someone out there who would be very happy to take it off your hands. Get chatting to your neighbours, your flatmates, or any friends and family that live locally and see if you can find a new home for any of your unwanted food. It may also be the case that you need a little of something but know you wouldn’t use the rest if you bought it yourself. Ask around to see if there is anyone who can give you some of what they have. We used to do this a lot when I was little; if we were baking or cooking something and were missing just one ingredient, we popped over to our neighbours to see if they had some. Now there are also apps, such as Olio, which can help you to do this. Reaching out to others and creating a culture where food is shared is so useful as well as just being a really lovely way of bringing about a sense of community.
8. STAY EDUCATED, STAY GRATEFUL – try to always bear in mind how much of a blessing it is to have food on your plate. It is easy for something that, for so many of us, is just a normal part of our daily lives to become something we take for granted. But food is precious; the resources that went into it are precious, and there are so many people that still do without food each day. We are far less likely to throw out food when we are aware of what went into making it as well as how lucky we are to have it. Fight the complacency that might be lurking inside of you, change your attitude to waste, and keep striving for a better world. This one is in our hands; it is on our plates.
Anna Steen is a trainee solicitor and recent Law graduate from the University of Edinburgh. You can read more of her food writing at Steen’s Beans.