Journey to Reducing Food Waste

**Tomato seedlings grown from grocery store tomatoes.**

When thinking of reducing food waste… there are a lot of things to consider.

While at the store, ask yourself… do I need this? If you think it may go bad before you eat it, don’t purchase it.

While at home, put food that may go bad first at the front of the fridge (or create a section for perishable food).

Something people commonly think of for food waste is a compost, but before this food even gets to the compost, there are a variety of ways you can use food that is past the date of perfection.

**Veggie ramen from vegetable scrap broth.**

Save up veggie scraps (bottoms of kale, stems, tops of carrots, beets etc.) and put them in your freezer. Once you have enough, look up recipes for at home veggie broth.

Whenever berries start to turn, place them in the freezer to have smoothies for later. Things like bananas or blueberries can be put in baked goods for sweet treats.

Use some inedible food waste creatively!

You can use egg shells as planters

You can regrow the tops to many vegetables (so far I have done bok choy, celery, beets, carrots, green onions, onions etc). I have also harvested some seeds from chili peppers and tomatoes to regrow and it worked (the final product may be very different from what you originally had in mind).

Once you’ve done all this, then you can compost!