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Not only is food wastage a huge problem worldwide, it is also a major problem here in Australia, and we are each playing a big role in the issue. Just as we do our best to make our food production more friendly to the planet, we can also reduce the amount of food being thrown out. This includes the edible food that never even reaches the shops, the unsold or uneaten food in restaurants and the food we discard of ourselves at home.
Worldwide, the impacts of food waste are astonishing! Contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, uses freshwater that we can’t really afford to sacrifice, costs farm animals their lives which in turn accounts for billions of dollars worth of human labour, not to mention forests cut down and wetlands drained purely for production of food that is never even eaten!
Did you know, when food rots with other organics in landfill, it gives off a greenhouse gas called METHANE which is 25 times more potent than the carbon pollution that comes out of our car exhaust?
To give you an idea of just how big of an issue food wastage is, here are a few facts to help put things into perspective:
- One third of all food produced is lost or wasted, around 1.3 BILLION tonnes of food - costing the global economy close to $940 BILLION each year.
- If one quarter of the food currently lost or wasted could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people.
- If food waste was a country, it would be the THIRD BIGGEST emitter of greenhouse gases after US and China.
- 25% of the world’s freshwater supply is used to grow food that is never eaten
What damage are we causing from the comfort of our own homes?
- Australians discard up to 20% of the food they purchase - that equates to 1 out of every 5 bags of groceries they buy and $8 billion a year!
- Up to 40% of the average household bin is food
- For the average Australian household, $1,036 of food is thrown away a year
- Throwing away one burger wastes the same amount of water as a 90-minute shower.
If you add up all the food Australia wastes each year, it’s enough to fill 450,000 garbage trucks. Placed end to end, the convoy would bridge the gap between Australia and New Zealand, just over THREE TIMES!
MIND BLOWING STUFF, RIGHT!?
Let’s take a look at the possible reasons WHY there is so much waste within a household.
- We cook too much food
- We don’t know how to use leftovers
- Food is mistakenly thrown out before the use-by/best before
- Buying takeaways at the last minute instead of cooking the food we have at home
- We don’t check the cupboard or fridge before going shopping
- We buy too much because we don’t stick to a shopping list
- We often shop when we are hungry so we buy more food than we need
So, what are dinner twist doing about it?
We here at Dinner Twist we are passionate about doing our best to play a part in lowering these statistics. Our recipes are carefully designed to split ingredients over multiple meals where necessary and utilise each ingredient to its full potential to ensure there is little to no food waste when cooking each meal. We aim to tackle the issue of overbuying at the shops, control portion sizes and if there happens to be some leftovers, they are ready to go for lunch the next day!
When testing days come around the recipe team compile an exact ingredients list and the shopping is done the day before to ensure freshness and no wastage. While we are on the topic of the kitchen, check out our bins! Call us OCD, but we live for a well organised system when it comes to waste at Dinner Twist HQ. With our co-mingle, organics, cardboard and shrink wrap bins, we can sleep well at night knowing all our rubbish is going to its correct home.
Ever wondered why the ordering cut off is so early? This is because we shop for exact numbers, no guessing, we simply take the number of box orders, and purchase only what we need. We shop for thousands a week and in doing so, we reduce the numbers of cars heading to the shops. We work closely with WA suppliers who have similar core values to ours when it comes to caring for our beautiful environment. Our fish is caught using sustainable methods, the meat is free range or pastured, our packaging is all biodegradable and we continuously reuse the eskys that hold your goodies. Which is why we ask you to recycle any plastics found within the box, leave all soft plastics in your esky and when we deliver your next box, we can pick up your old box, and make use of it all again!
However, we are only human and sometimes, we find we are left with just a small amount of leftover food from time to time. This is when we call our friends at Food Rescue and Breast Cancer Care WA, where we are able to hand over these extras and support those who are in need of a heart warming meal.
How are you contributing as a customer?
As a customer, you are contributing in a number of ways you may not even be aware of! Aside from supporting all of the above, you are also having an impact by letting us do all the work for you! We do the shopping for you, which means no over purchasing, no spontaneous buying of foods when hungry at the supermarket, no need to question how much produce is needed to feed the family and no need to stress over how to make use of leftovers! (Not to mention keeping cars off the road and playing an active part in using less plastics… but that’s another story)
Try these simple steps in your home today and let’s start tackling the issue of food wastage one step at a time!
- Store food correctly
- Use your freezer
- Cook only what you need
- Use leftovers
- Compost food scraps
- Reuse packaging
