I was reading about an interesting British initiative the other day. A government agency is trialling going door to door giving advice about how to reduce food wastage. The estimate of this agency is that about one third of all food purchased in the UK ends up in the bin costing an average family about $1,100 each year. The article cites that the C02 impact of eliminating this waste would be equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road (Source: NZ Healthy Food March 2009 p. 14. Original source: Telegraph.co.uk).
In our household we have been trying really hard since the end of 2008 to minimise food wastage, planning our meals around what is about to expire etc so that we make the most of the food we have bought. Last week we had sickness in the house and were off our food a little so we ended up with a bit of wastage but even that was very minimal compared to what we used to waste. The cats play their part as well – we have found they are very fussy about the kind of food they get during the day but if we leave meat scraps from our dinner out during the night the plate is always clean when we get up in the morning.