Even though we look at the West and scrunch up our noses in disdain for their food fights that end up as waste, India’s food wastage problem is an equally pressing concern!
It is estimated that Indian households generate nearly 50 kgs of kitchen waste per person per year – and this does not even include the food wasted in the supply chains. As a country that reveres frugality and acknowledges that food shortage is debilitating to a nation’s growth, we need to make efforts to cut down such wastefulness. Today, we take a look at some practical strategies on how to reduce kitchen waste or turn it into something useful.
How to Reduce Kitchen Waste
You can reduce kitchen waste in the following ways:
Invest in Reusable Items
This strategy for how to reduce kitchen waste is crazy simple – reuse as much as you can. From cloth grocery bags to Tupperware – purchase items that you can use (and reuse) in the long run. Such items can replace wasteful single-use plastic bags or storage bins that eventually end up in landfills. Sure, it will require you to put your money into such products. However, the ROI on such purchases, be it the environmental impact or cost-to-benefit ratio, would effortlessly justify this decision.
Plan Your Meals in Advance
Planning your meals in advance ensures that food is less likely to go bad. And the less likely the food is to go bad, the less likely it is to end up as waste. Make it a habit to plan out your meal for the entire week, or at least a couple of days.
Then make a shopping list that only includes ingredients that are absolutely essential for the preparation, especially when fresh produce or perishables are involved. Follow the chart with the occasional treats that you allow yourself and you will notice that you would have significantly reduced your kitchen waste.
Learn to Store Food Items
While you can minimise the amount of food that you get at home, you also need to complement this strategy of how to reduce kitchen waste with the proper storage. Small tricks like keeping fruits and vegetables separately to prevent them from turning overripe or transferring food into ziplock bags will prevent spoilage.
And while you’re at it, also learn about the shelf life of the food items that you use on the regular so that it can help with meal planning. If it comes to it, print out a chart and place it in your kitchen or on your fridge for ready reference.
Eat Your Peels
Yes, you read that right! Believe it or not, vegetable peels produce a lot of waste that can be easily avoided. Plus, it robs you of the nutrients and vitamins present in the peels.
But what about hygiene, you ask? We have a fix for that too. Purchase a high-quality vegetable brush to scrub produce like carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, etc., to get rid of all the dirt and grime. You can follow the same process for select fruits like guava or apple.
What about produce that needs to be peeled, like onions and citrus foods? Check out the following segment that covers tips on reusing and recycling such kitchen wastes.
How to Reuse or Recycle Kitchen Waste
Here are a few practical tips to reduce or recycle kitchen waste:
Get Into Composting
Once again, this technique for recycling kitchen waste is super simple. It is no secret that most of the biodegradable and organic waste produced in your kitchen can be turned into nutrient-rich compost. We have been reading about the process of composting and how it infuses a new life into the soil from our school days.
And you don’t even need to have a dedicated closed bin or open bin composting pit in your garden for the process. It is very much possible to compost kitchen waste inside earthen pots and plastic containers as well. So, composting in apartments is very much possible. Then use it in your garden or even sell it, if you will, and you would be killing two birds with one stone.
Learn to Grow Your Food
If you have a green thumb, you can always regrow food from scraps – yes, you read that right. It is rather simple to regrow food waste like the tops of carrots, beetroots, and pineapples. At the same time, you can also regrow spring onions, cabbage, and lettuce by submerging its lower end in water.
And who can forget that mint plant stalks can yield more leaves when replanted? Regrowing food will take anywhere between two weeks to five months and your patience would be very well worth it as you enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Pamper Yourself (Yes, With Waste!)
Chances are that you may have already made a face scrub with used coffee grinds or powdered citrus peels. Similarly, you may have fixed puffy eyes with used tea bags. In other words, you already know that kitchen waste can amp up your beauty regime in several ways.
So, why stop at just one or two odd home remedies? Trust us, beauty from waste is an interesting rabbit hole where you will discover new ways to pamper yourself. Use potato peel starch for tighter skin? Yes! Moisturise skin with banana peels? Yes! Get lighter skin using overripe tomato pulp? Yes! It is a whole different world waiting for you to explore.
Make Stock From Scraps
If you don’t have the time and patience to compost or grow your feed or even try DIY beauty hacks, then turning the food scraps into stock is your best bet. From onion peels to leftover bones – everything goes into a simmering pot of water and in just a couple of hours, you have nutritious stock that you can use in soups and curries for months!
Kitchen waste is no longer an insurmountable problem. We have covered several tips and tricks on how to reduce kitchen waste and reuse or recycle the rest. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, you can do a lot more to live a zero-waste life. Check out the HomeLane blog to know more about how you can improve your quality of life without impacting Mother Nature!
