Keep a food waste diary

A great way to keep track of the food you are throwing away is to write a food waste diary.

A food waste diary will help you to identify what foods are wasted more often in your home and how much is thrown away.

Get started with your food waste diary

To get started with your food waste diary, consider:

the type and amount of each food thrown away
why it was thrown away (for example, it had gone mouldy, cooked too much, passed the ‘use-by’ date)?
how you disposed of it (for example, in your food recycling caddy or compost bin)

Once you have an idea of the waste created, you can then refer to this diary to consider the following:

how often you need to buy a certain item
if you can reduce the quantity of items you buy by choosing to buy loose
finding out how to store particular foods correctly
if you can freeze an item, or buy an item frozen to start with to keep it fresh
looking up recipes to use up regularly wasted foods
if you can recycle it in your food recycling or compost it instead of throwing away in the bin