Waste Not

Words & Photography
by Alyson Morgan



On our low waste journey, we’ve found many uses for our food waste. With this seasonal shift, I tend to save good scraps for stocks and broths, adding herbs and medicinal mushrooms for extra immune support. Some other ways try to reduce our food waste in the colder months: feed it to our worms (we have a vermicompost bin in the basement, great for indoor or small space composting), or give it as snacks it to the chickens that comes back in the form of eggs. Or sometimes all three!

On our low waste journey, we’ve found many uses for our food waste. With this seasonal shift, I tend to save good scraps for stocks and broths, adding herbs and medicinal mushrooms for extra immune support.

If you can, put your food waste to good use and let it rot or nourish you, because food waste is overlooked as a driver of climate change.

Did you know:
+ In the United States 40% of food is wasted, 33% globally.
+ When you put food waste into a landfill it generates and releases methane gas.
+ Methane gas is 20 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.
+ If food waste were a country, it would come in third behind the US and China as the largest greenhouse gas emitter.
+ Growing and transporting food that goes to waste emits as much pollution as 39 million vehicles, not to mention the freshwater resources and land wasted to grow the food we waste.

This is astounding. But it also means food systems and waste has a huge potential to reduce our environmental footprint. It’s an invitation for small changes we can all try to make in our homes.