When this new food caddy arrives, here’s how to reduce waste – not just recycle

If you live in England, you may have just got a new food waste caddy. Councils must now collect your separated food waste and turn it into fuel, compost or compost. So you can live comfortably knowing that your provisions for potatoes and stale bread will be put to good use instead of going to landfill.

But there is a danger that when we don’t feel bad about wasting food, we can make less effort to try to reduce the amount we waste. This is a problem, because about 40 to 50 times more energy is used to produce, transport and sell food than can be recovered from recycling. To significantly reduce food-related emissions we need to commit to reducing food waste, not just recycling.

Reducing food waste is difficult. It’s hard to know exactly how many potatoes to eat for Sunday lunch. Potatoes left in the fridge can easily be forgotten. Predicting how many bananas your kids will eat before they’re overripe during the week is tricky. And it’s hard to convince yourself to eat that old loaf of bread for lunch when you can get a fresh baguette on your way to work.

There are many different factors that influence our food needs and preferences.

Plan and track

How can we make it easier? Our research points to two key steps that can make a significant difference.

First, try a shorter, more flexible meal plan. There is evidence that meal planning practices reduce waste. These include planning meals in advance, making a grocery list and checking the fridge and cupboards before shopping. But the further we go into meal planning, the more time there is for things to change. You may be invited to dinner, you may run out of time to cook, your child may get away with hummus.

Adding flexibility can help. This can include planning leftovers, including meals that can be modified to accommodate different ingredients (such as stir-fries or stews or something with eggs). Alternating food between days depending on the time, inclination and number of mouths to feed also helps.

This trick won’t work for everyone. If you have little interest in cooking or limited time and energy, all of this can seem like a daunting task.

Another way is to use the introduction of a food waste collection plan as an opportunity to start tracking your waste. How many caddies do you fill each week? Would you like a smaller number? Does anything seem to lead to more or less waste?

This process of monitoring can create a different perspective where we compare what is actually happening with what we want to do and use any gap between the two to decide what to do next. Feedback loops can be very useful for results that are influenced by many different factors, such as a person’s weight, population life expectancy or household waste.

Experimenting with different ways to reduce food waste can inspire you to identify the methods that work best for you. For example, you may find your kids like ripe bananas in smoothies. Or that putting your leftover potatoes in the front of the fridge means you’re less likely to forget about them.

All of this assumes that you have the motivation to reduce your food waste in the first place. If carbon doesn’t bother you, you might consider saving money. In the UK, an estimated £17.5 billion worth of food is wasted every year. That’s around £1,000 a year for a family of four. These costs are certainly not small potatoes.