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If food waste is unavoidable, be sure to put leftovers/peels into your waste food bin or compost bin in your garden. Food should not be going into landfill. In the US 20% of what goes into municipal landfill is food waste. How much food waste could you divert from landfill?

When food is put into landfill it is trapped in plastic bags with no air to help break it down. When it rots in this manner it produces methane gas which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

When it’s put into a compost bin it is broken down by worms, beetles and other organisms which turn it into a nutrient rich soil conditioner. This can then be put on your garden plants to help them flourish and grow.

So remember, keep a container in your kitchen for peels/food scraps and empty it into a compost bin instead of the regular bin.

Every Little Thing Counts

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If beef forms part of a person’s diet, it accounts for a significant proportion of an individual’s own GHG output. Replacing some or all of your beef consumption will reduce your environmental impact.

A standard portion size for minced beef is 125g. 125g of beef produces 12.4kg of greenhouse gas emissions. If you cut out minced beef for one meal a week you would save 646kg of greenhouse gas emissions in a year. A steak is double this. A portion of steak is approximately 250g which produces 25kg of greenhouse gas emissions.

Weigh how much beef you use in a typical week. Every 1g of beef produces 99.48g of greenhouse gas emissions.

Think how much you could reduce your carbon impact (CO2e) if you cut out even one beef meal per week for a year!

In the above example of steak, if 1 million people cut out one steak meal a week for a year it would save 1.3 million metric tonnes of CO2e emissions. That’s the equivalent of taking 680,000 ICE (internal combustion engine) cars off the road for a year.

Every Little Thing Counts

Category: Actions

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Mouldy bread food waste

When you curtail food waste you cut down carbon emissions. It’s that simple. When food is wasted so too is all the energy and water it takes to grow, harvest, package and transport that food. If the food waste ends up in landfill it rots and produces methane gas which is more potent than carbon dioxide.

According to a UNEP (UN Environment Program) report it is estimated that between 8% and 10% of carbon emissions globally are due to food that is not consumed.

While your action may not make an immediate difference, if everybody purchased only what they needed, demand would reduce, buyers would order less and growers would reduce or diversify production.

Here are some things you can do to minimise your food waste:

These small steps not only reduce your carbon emissions, they are good for your wallet also.  They reduce your spend on wasted food but they also reduce your cost of waste disposal.

Every Little Thing Counts