Too big, too small, too gnarled: how to combat food waste

Let that next bite of chocolate melt slowly on your tongue, because it’ll be bittersweet. Did you know that nearly more chocolate is binned in production than packaged and sold? The reason is absurd. Before switching to a different type, for instance from milk to dark, machines get «washed» with pure chocolate. This batch is then disposed of as a waste product, weighing into the kilogrammes. Lavishness is wrecking the world.

The journey into the absurd really picks up the pace when you look at food waste on a global scale. According to the World Hunger Index, 828 million people are affected by chronic hunger, and yet a third of the food produced worldwide doesn’t even make it from fields to consumers’ plates. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) revealed that every year, 400 billion US dollars of food is discarded between the time it’s harvested and when it hits the shelves.

Usually, it’s for cosmetic reasons. The produce is either too small, too big or too gnarled. Only food that’s been standardised to perfection makes it into supermarkets. And once the best-before date (BBD) has passed, products are even disposed of in their original packaging. In Switzerland, the Federal Office for the Environment (site in German) calculates avoidable food losses at 330 kg per capita per year.

A development that’s being witnessed in Switzerland and beyond is that, according to data from the Statistical Office of the European Union, households account for 53% of all food waste in the EU.

The somewhat ambivalent message: food waste starts at everyone’s dinner table – but it can also end right there. You can read more about how to help below. But before we get to that, let’s clarify how overproduction and the climate are related.

Eating leftovers protects the environment

The issue of food waste isn’t just a controversial subject with respect to world hunger. Rather, discarded food is a strong contributor to the climate crisis. Scarce resources, such as water, land and energy for cultivating, processing and transport are (far too) often used for waste disposal. To give you an example, the German consumer watchdog (site in German) concludes that almost 30% of the world’s available arable land is used for growing all the food we dispose of.

And this food waste has a huge impact on the climate. Food losses in the EU produce the same amount of climate-damaging gases per year as the entire Netherlands. A study from the FAO paints an even bleaker picture, with the statistic that avoidable food waste emits 4.4 gigatonnes of CO2 per year globally.

If food waste were a country, it’d be the third-largest CO2 emitter, just behind China and the US.

Avoidable and non-avoidable food waste

As the term «waste» suggests, in food form, it’s largely preventable. We’re talking about food that would still have been edible when it was thrown out. For instance, that unopened yogurt pot with a best-before date two days ago. In all likelihood, it’s still edible, and you should at least have a sniff to see if it’s really destined for the bin.

I’m not suggesting anyone work their way through leftovers that have gone off in the fridge. Often, when it comes to reducing food waste, all it takes is a bit of mindfulness when shopping or cooking. Staying alert can help with avoidable food waste. Here’s a useful checklist: does it still look fresh? Does it smell fresh? Does it taste fresh? If so, you don’t need to throw it in the bin. And that’s that.

Tips for everyday life: how to tackle food waste

This test is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. Given much of Europe’s food waste stems from households, here are few simple rules in food management to help organise your meals for the week.

1. Plan your shop in order to waste less food

It’s probably common practice, but to avoid food waste, you’ll want to buy less food overall. To be more specific, only get as much as you can eat in a given time. Instead of buying in bulk for the next two weeks, it’s better to plan to do smaller shops and only replenish the fridge for the next two to three days. This way, you keep track of what you’ve got and what you’re going to cook with.

It’s also helpful to keep a shopping list to avoid impulse buys. What food do you need in the coming days and which leftovers need to be eaten soon? This way you make sure you don’t needlessly buy two or three of one thing while other produce goes bad.

2. Store your food properly

Proper storage is the key to longer shelf life. For example, not all food needs to be kept in the fridge. While it makes mushrooms last longer, tomatoes and aubergines don’t do well chilled. So, put them in the pantry or on the kitchen counter at room temperature. Similarly, carrots, potatoes and onions don’t need to be refrigerated. They keep best in a cool, dark place – ideally in the cellar.

Moreover, if you keep your fridge tidy, you should be able to increase the shelf life. Meat and perishables need to be stored as far back and down as possible (as that’s where it’s coldest), dairy products in the middle, and open, processed food on the upper shelves.

In addition, there are some fruit and vegetables that should ideally not be kept next to each other. For example, apples and bananas. The former release a gas that accelerates the ripening process of bananas and makes them mushy quickly. Incidentally, the same applies to putting apples next to pears, lemons and tomatoes.

As a little storage trick, you can also get into the habit of placing new items at the back of the fridge. This helps you eat your way from old to new, so to speak, and avoids food waste.

3. Question the best-before date

The best-before date (BBD) is an indicator of how long the manufacturer guarantees the freshness of its product. It tells you: this product is quite literally «best before» rather than «inedible from» the date printed on it. As such, it’s a recommended consumption period, but in most cases – especially if you stored it well – it can be alright to check after. Use your common sense. If the food is in its original packaging, looks good and still smells fine, it’s safe to eat.

However, the use-by (site in German) date is different. This signals the last day you can eat or buy the produce. The use-by date distinguishes highly perishable items, such as mince or fish, which can pose a health risk after a short period of time (due to germs such as salmonella). If possible, you should eat these foods before or on the use-by date.

4. Preserving and freezing

This tip makes it easy as pie to get food to last longer. For instance, you can preserve a loaf of bread or some pastries in the freezer for months and then defrost them whenever you like, without losing much in the way of flavour. Obviously, this also applies to other foods such as meat or pre-prepared food, such as stews and cakes. But did you know that you can also easily make tetrapacks of milk last longer by putting them in the freezer?

Another option is to preserve food. For instance, you can boil down overripe tomatoes into a tomato sauce and serve it the next time you have pasta. And you can use the apples that have already seen out their golden years to conjure up apple puree or an apple strudel.

5. Support the industry so that less food gets thrown away

It’s not just your home that’s a site for food waste; it also happens in the food industry itself. And it’s something several small start-ups have pledged to combat. The app Too Good To Go lets you collect leftovers from restaurants, bakeries and the organic place round the corner at the end of the day, and it doesn’t cost very much. This means less gets thrown away when they close up shop. However, critics do point out that this doesn’t provide much incentive for the industry to actually reduce overall production. After all, they make money from overproduction and know that the excess goods will be taken off their hands, even if it’s for less. A look at the Swiss B2B marketplace (site in German) shows the amount of surplus each producer is left with at the end of the day.

Other start-ups such as Rettergut (site in German) save food from being chucked out along the entire supply chain – from field to retail – and sell it in the form of pestos, soups and sweets. Incidentally, their first product was the aforementioned mixed chocolate. This is made from the batch used to separate different types of confection and as such, considered a waste product in the industrial chocolate market.

In Switzerland, there are many ways to combat food waste. Food Chat (site in German), for example, buys fruit and vegetables from wholesalers with minor imperfections and flaws (also called wonky fruit and veg) and distributes them via WhatsApp to anyone interested. Initiatives such as RestEssBar also regularly leave surplus food in public fridges as free takeaway. And for larger events, you can book catering companies like Zum guten Heinrich that cook using wonky vegetables that are usually discarded in fields.