Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste

In honor of Earth Day on April 22, we’re challenging ReDux members to show how they reduce food waste. Whatever you would normally toss, use it up. Share tips for reducing food waste in meal planning, prep or using up scraps.

Because I am heading out of town, I am attempting to utilize ALL leftovers so there is zero food waste before I head out.  Brian isn’t traveling with me, but he is a little less creative in the kitchen – I’ll keep basics on hand for him and use up any leftover parts and pieces of veggies I can find!

Reducing food waste is something that I am constantly working towards, and I can definitely use some tips if you have them!  While I can improve on my food waste efforts, there are a few things I do on a regular basis to reduce my food waste each week:

Meal Planning

I find that by having a meal plan, I can purchase almost exactly what I need for the week and I can pick recipe that utilize similar ingredients.  Having overlap helps save time, and reduces the number of ingredients I have to purchase overall!

Composting

This is something BRAND new to me, so any advice you have for me is welcome!  This is really helpful with food waste because I can toss the parts of vegetables I don’t want to eat, coffee grounds, etc into the compost bin and I know that it will be used for a better purpose than just sitting in the dump.  We haven’t started planting our garden yet, but when Mother’s Day rolls around I will be excited to start using some of the compost I have been brewing up for the past couple of months.

Making Homemade Broth

I set aside veggie tops and scraps to use while making my homemade vegetable broth.  Some of my favorite things to include are herbs, carrots, parsnips, zucchini, and turnips.  The broth is wonderful for using as a flavor base for a TON of recipes, it is lower in sodium and has no preservatives like the store-bought broth, AND it gives the parts of your veggies you would throw away a use.

Using Food Stems and Leftover Vegetables in a Stir Fry

This is where today’s recipe comes in handy!  Many food stems that are often discarded (kale stems, broccoli stems, heads of carrots, ends of zucchini, etc) are actually quite flavorful and can be used in a stir fry dish like this!

Because this dish is dependent on the ingredients you have on hand, feel free to customize and think of it more like a method rather than a specific recipe.  You can interchange:

• any type of protein
• any type of aromatics (onion, garlic, ginger, chives, green onion, etc)
• any type of vegetables
• any type of grain or cauliflower rice