According to a report published in 2021, India wastes food worth ₹8,88,00,00,00,000 (Eighty eight thousand eight hundred crore Indian rupees) every year! Tonnes of food which could easily be utilised for making something of value ends up in our landfills. Reducing food waste won’t just help keep food out of our landfills but will also help you in saving money. A few things you can do to achieve so are:
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Buy what you know you will be able to eat, which in very crude terms translates to – shop realistically
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Make sure you freeze the food you know you won’t be able to eat in time
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Avoid stuffing your refrigerator excessively
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Cook as per your needs
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Make sure you actually eat the leftovers at a later time or at least feed domestic animals with it
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Understand that expiry dates on food products as more like guidelines rather that a rule
Here are a few easy and practical things inspired from Lauren from ‘The Zero Waste Memoirs’ you can do to use the food scraps before throwing or composting.
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Make potato peel chips out of your potato scraps. Very nutritious!
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Regrow vegetables at home by saving and retaining their seeds, pits, and cuttings.
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Make delicious tomato sauce from the tomato peels, cores and juice just by blending and simmering with spices and oils of your choice.
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Avoid ants by placing cucumber peels at the entrance points in your house.
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Use vegetable peels as a natural fabric dye! Beetroot for red and purple, red cabbage for blue and spinach for greens.
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Green trunks of broccoli make for a delicious soup. Search “broccoli stalk soup” on Google!
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Chop finely and freeze leftover herbs in water or oil before they get spoilt.
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Rub the soft side of a banana peel on the leaves of houseplants to remove dust and shine them.
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Make jam from apple peels and cores. You can also do this with strawberry tops.
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Make a homemade air freshener from leftover fruit scraps by just boiling them in a little water on the stove and ‘watch’ you home smell sweeter.
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Drop a few banana peels into a bucket of water and let sit for a few days. This will become a potassium and phosphorus-rich “compost tea” for your garden and house plants.
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Toss a couple of citrus peels down the garbage disposal to remove the stink.
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Turn apple peels into a sweet apple tea.
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Turn dried bread crusts into breadcrumbs. You can enjoy them with soup.
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Use a small, dried bread crust to soak up oils and scrub hardened food from your cast iron pans.
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Hold onto fine coffee grounds and use as an exfoliant.
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Use dried-out cheese that has not gone moldy to make macaroni & cheese. You’ll never know the difference!
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Grind cleaned and cracked egg shells into calcium powder.
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Use your tea bags twice. Add a couple of used ones together and you’ll have a tea strong enough to brew.
Do you have any other clever uses for food scraps that you would like to share?