Follow These Tips to Cut Back on Food Waste

You don’t have to be meticulous

Whitney Pipkin
Heated

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Danielle Reid/EyeEm for Getty Images

There’s something about the freshness of fall that makes us want to overhaul our kitchens.

Maybe it was watching those crunchy summer greens go limp in the vegetable drawer or the realization that last week’s molded sliced turkey won’t make it into this week’s lunch boxes. Let’s not even talk about the carton of milk that curdled in the fridge during back-to-back vacations last month.

Despite our best efforts, food still seems to go bad before our eyes. And we’re not alone. Americans waste nearly a pound of food per day on average, and a family of four spends about $1,500 a year on food they’ll end up tossing out.

A study in Oregon found that nearly three-quarters of food waste was edible at some point (it’s not all eggshells and chicken bones). Food that could have been eaten fills landfills, helping to make them the third-largest source of methane emissions from human-caused activities in the country.

But you’ve heard much of this before, and you’ve resolved to improve before, right?

When Alison Mountford founded Ends+Stems, a meal planning service aimed at reducing household food waste, she became a de facto priest for people’s…

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