Everybody Hates Wasting Food – How Can We Stop?

If Everybody Hates Wasting Food, Why Do We Do It and How Can We Stop?

Saturday, 14 November 2015 – By Mary Hoff, Ensia | Report

It was bound to happen. When I first got the assignment to write a story on reducing consumer food waste, I was feeling just a little smug. I’m the one who wraps up breadsticks at the restaurant to take home, slurps the last bit of soup from the bowl, cuts the soft spots out of an apple rather than tossing the whole thing away. But even though I personally don’t fritter food, plenty of people do — and this would be my big chance to help reduce the hefty social and environmental costs by exploring why and what we can do about it.  

Then I opened my refrigerator. Pulling out what I thought was a perfectly healthy stalk of celery, I found instead the early stages of compost. On the top shelf, a cottage cheese carton disguised leftovers I had diligently squirreled away — and promptly forgotten. And then there was the ketchup. “Best if used by March 2012”? Busted.  [Read more]