Wow – 2019 flew by! It seemed like a day or so ago I came up with this experiment to figure out how much food we threw away this year. To track the food we didn’t use and that ended up in the trash bag versus our compost bins.
According to cbc.ca and the report they are referencing, “Canada is among the worst globally in wasting food” and frankly, that’s just disappointing. But also, how do we have people starving?! That’s a whole other blog post. The report also estimates that the average Canadian wastes 170 kilograms of food every year! foodrescue.ca approximates the cost to each household is $1,766 per year.
Folks, there are 37.6 million of us in Canada. That’s an incredible amount of food waste.
Let’s find out how my household measured up this year. We have two people in the household, so our average would be 340 kg.
Drumroll please!
In 2019, we threw out a total of 53.134 kg.
What did we learn over the last year about food waste?
- Our fridge is a haven for food to spoil.
- Sometimes I make big batches of things I don’t like, then I freeze them in some odd hope that they’ll get better. Spoiler alert: they don’t.
- Weekly grocery shopping habits may need to change
- We’re very happy being well below average in this case.
- Trying recipes is good but it would be nice to share the food with family and friends
- It may be a consideration to start a food swap in my community or use the kitchen in our hall as an opportunity to start cooking together.
If you’d like to try the food waste tracking experiment yourself, fill out this form and you’ll get a free template!
In 2020, we’ll be embarking on a new adventure of reducing our waste – eliminating plastic wrap. If you have ideas, please comment – we’d love to hear from you!
I love using the Beeswax Wrap by Abeego if you’re trying to reduce plastic wrap. They’re made and founded in Canada. Plus, they keep your food still fresh (even half cut avocados!).