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as two 20-somethings watching our food bills rise, we thought little of the food waste produced. it was just one of the growing sources of money sapping lifestyle inflation we had. we were adding convenience foods, eating out, and generally doing what two middle-class americans do once they’re out of school and starting careers: spend! as our budget ballooned, so too did our carbon footprint and waste.

but what if we could rethink our relationship with food in a way that would cut waste and save money?

food and individual empowerment

many ideas we think about on planet forward are nuanced, distant concepts. we don’t personally have much direct control over them. but, there is something we all individually do that has a real effect on the environment, society, and even our own wealth. we eat, and sometimes not with great efficiency.

it’s been close to a decade since we started looking — bleary-eyed with student loan debt — at our finances and the consumerism that blew holes in our budget. we’ve been fortunate to turn the tide, and then some, through lots of small purchasing decisions along the way. 

while writing about financial independence as one of a duo of 35-year-old early retirees, i’ve spent copious amounts of time researching how to reduce our grocery expenses. reducing food waste became a central theme of our expert guide to saving money at the grocery store.

ultimately, we cut our monthly grocery expenses from $575.80 to $339.85 in 2019 — a more than 40% savings.

in the process, we found the fortunate side effect of a reduced carbon footprint and a dramatic drop in food waste. put in place our strategies and do the same today. cutting food waste can lead to favorable outcomes for society and the environment.

it can even save you money — and you have full control over it.

reducing food waste can save you money

when food is wasted, so too are the resources used to produce that food.

an average u.s. household spends about $5,850 per year on food, according to the aaea.

reducing waste is an opportunity for households to directly improve the environment and strengthen their own financial position. while landfills are overflowing with wasted nutrition, food banks run out of resources to provide for those in need. in the time of a global pandemic, those most vulnerable tend to be those most in need of resources like food banks.

food waste in the united states

the average u.s. household wastes 31.9% of the food it purchases. consumer‐level food waste was valued at $240 billion in a single year, according to the aaea. the average u.s. household loses $1,866 on wasted food per year, according to a recent penn state study. this food waste is all-encompassing within a household: groceries, restaurants, and fast food. 

the money you might be wasting in the food you throw away

penn state’s study is based on u.s. households, which the census defines as 2.5 people. that means there’s $746.40 per person, per year or $62.20 per month in wasted food for just one person! cutting your personal food waste in half could put enough money into your budget for your netflix subscription and cell phone bill combined. not to mention all the knock-on effects to the environment.

so what can you do?

it’s easy to say we can reduce our food waste to help the environment and ourselves. but what actual steps can we take to make this change? here are five ways to reduce food waste and save money.

1. rethink what a meal is

if you’re like me, you grew up with a dinner plate that was nicely divided between three sections. it was a little pie chart of meat, a “starch,” and hopefully a vegetable. eggs were for breakfast. cereal was a complete meal. sandwiches with cold cuts were for lunch.

it doesn’t have to be that way. it can be any way you want, you’re an adult!

you don’t have to eat meals the way that we’ve decided they should be in the last 1% of the timeframe of human existence (and 1% is very generous). your goal is to satiate yourself and provide adequate nutrition, at a reasonable cost.

2. rethink your diet from zero

that doesn’t mean you need to switch to a diet of rice and beans. but, it does mean you should rethink your diet: start from the ground up rather than trying to remove things from your current diet. consciously add dishes that meet nutritional requirements along with foods you enjoy! devise how they can fit into your meal plan.

if you couldn’t care less how you eat it, identify the healthiest ingredients at the lowest cost, stick them in a blender, and go to town. kale and peanut butter in a smoothie? i mean, have you tried it? 

no one said you have to use a fork!

3. don’t let time be the master of your meals

you can eat dinner things for breakfast. leftover beans from last night’s dinner? mix them in with your eggs! just because you don’t normally eat green beans with your breakfast doesn’t mean you can’t. 

if you’ve run out of your typical breakfast foods, don’t force yourself to run out and restock the eggs just because they’re the normal accompaniment. challenge yourself to incorporate the beans with breakfast instead. you’ll help prevent your leftover food from going to waste and make your tongue a little more flexible.

having flexibility in your diet and your idea of what a meal is will permit you to be more efficient by maximizing your food use and reducing waste. flexibility saves you money, and not only with food.

4. don’t buy bulk when you don’t eat bulk

i don’t know about you, but our household is just two people. we’re decidedly averaged sized, too. i don’t know why we so often wind up with “family-sized” multi-packs of oatmeal that might be intended to feed horses. actually, i think i know why.

for years, we’ve read those repetitive “10 grocery tips to save money!” type of articles. they typically include:

• buy in bulk

• pay the lowest per unit/ounce price

here’s the thing. that’s great starting advice when you’re just trying to get an idea of how to save money on groceries. but, if you’re not in a household of four people, bulk buying could be more expensive. we’ve followed that simple starting advice and wound up with more than our fair share of big-bottle condiments sitting in the bottom fridge shelf slowly changing colors. 

i thought ketchup was supposed to be a brighter red?

here’s the advice when you’re concerned about your food budget and waste: buy what you need!

put that optimizing part of your brain to work on figuring out how much of the product you actually use over time. purchase the size that’ll be consumed before it begins to crawl out of the fridge on its own.

reduce waste, save money.

5. grocery price-shop online; avoid driving

most grocery stores have their in-store pricing available online either through their website or app. if the brand itself doesn’t, you might have luck getting an idea of the prices by using contracted shopper services like instacart (though their prices tend to be marked up a bit). this also lets you compare pricing with online grocers like amazon or boxed from the comfort of your home.

if you want to get the absolute lowest price for your grocery list and are willing to make multiple trips to do it, do your price comparisons online. 

generally, it’s probably not worth it to go to multiple locations (especially when a car is involved) to save a few extra dollars. if you can live in an urban environment that’ll let you walk to pickup your food, that makes it easier to locally price-shop.

save money and improve the environment by reducing food waste

altering your perceptions of what a meal can be, when to have it, and not giving into marketing hype will let you rethink what food means to you. using the tactics outlined in this article, along with a few extras focused on reducing costs, let us save over 40% on our monthly grocery budget while eating a healthful diet.

a pleasant side effect has been a much lighter trash bag with barely any food waste in sight. it’s taken us some time, but our grocery spending reduction has lead to more efficient use of resources and a small improvement to the environment we had full control over.

you have the ability to make the same changes as we did, today. you can add to your wealth while taking less from the world around you.

what do you intend to do to help solve food waste in america? reach out to tictoclife on twitter with your ideas!

we do this often; it’s our “couples thing.” it horrified many of our friends and family when we started about a year ago, but now our finds are a part of normal conversations. given our successes, other friends have given it a go as well. we always exercise caution by only going together and sticking to areas that are pretty well lit. (we’ve only day dove once, but are still not super comfortable with it. odd glances and all.)

it started out as a fun and thrifty hobby we could do after talking to a couple who had actually met in a dumpster. and while it is certainly fun, it also became heartbreaking very quickly to see how many perfectly good items — especially food — get thrown out on a daily basis.

according to the food and agriculture organization, if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, just behind china and the united states. based on what i’ve seen in dumpsters — and to know that this is all in just one midwestern town — that’s not unfathomable: i’ve seen dumpsters full of spaghetti, still steaming from the hot bar it occupied only an hour before.

not all food found in a dumpster is edible, of course — at least not by humans. but there is quite a lot that is. i therefore encourage everyone to give it a shot. (i’m happy to report i’ve lost no friends by talking about it so much.) here is a list of ways that my and emily’s lives have changed thanks to this unusual practice:

we eat healthier

“healthier? no way!”

it’s true! produce expires pretty quickly. for example, the shelf life for brussels sprouts is about three to four days if properly refrigerated. that means that they start showing signs of wear in the supermarket in less time. so where is a grocer going to put them if they are technically fine, but no longer attractive enough to sell? the trash, of course! and with any luck, that grocer will dispose of them in a way that makes it safe for me to scoop‘em right out for dinner!

i’m not saying this to knock grocers; they provide an invaluable service to their communities. but we in the u.s. do have some issues with unattractive, yet healthy, food. thankfully, companies like imperfect produce exist, which combats food waste by “finding a home for ‘ugly’ produce,” as their website states. that is, they take produce from farms that is perfectly good, but won’t sell in grocery stores due to superficial damage, and they sell it for far less than you’d normally pay!

we eat more creatively

when you are suddenly in possession of 50 husks of corn, there are only so many times you can eat corn on the cob before you start to look for more creative ways to prepare it. the same goes for steak, bagels, strawberries, asparagus. (we’re still waiting to have this problem with chocolate.)

we’re saving money

in october of 2018, emily and i spent a whopping $84 on groceries, all thanks to dumpster diving. the only grocery shopping we’ve actually done is for essentials that we don’t usually find: milk, sugar, salt, flour.

we’re reducing waste

we may not be reducing it by a lot, but it feels like we are. it feels oddly satisfying, like a subversive civic duty, to come home from a 15 minute trek with two giant boxes of food. but it’s also very sad: the u.s. department of agriculture in 2014 estimated that 49.1 million americans were living in food insecure households.

thankfully, there are apps out there that work to curb such waste. apps like mealconnect act as liaisons among food donors, food pantries, and food insecure households. (emily and i have discussed starting a similar business.) but while they do exist and do amazing work, nearly half of all food produced still ends up in dumpsters.

we’re actually making money

as the saying goes: one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

in addition to scrounging for food in dumpsters, emily and i have been keeping our eyes peeled for what we call “roadside finds” — or large furniture items people leave on their curbs for garbage day. we take these items, spruce them up, and sell them. we’ve made over $1,000 doing this.

i’m writing this not to brag (ok, maybe a little), but to highlight that these items we’ve sold may also have ended up in a landfill otherwise. but for less than an hour of work for each sale, we’ve been able to clean them up and give them happy homes while making a small profit.

i’d like to challenge you to keep a look out for perfectly good discarded items in your community. they may not mean anything to the person throwing them away, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have new life elsewhere.

obviously, dumpster diving is not for everyone. it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to shove your (hopefully gloved) hand into a pile of trash. or to not even question what that liquid that just spilled on your arm was. but there are definitely good things that come of it if you can. this hobby has changed my life in many ways, and i hope that after reading this, it might change yours, too.

while food waste takes over american landfills, traditional composting is unable to keep up with both the quantity and range of foods being thrown out. but deep in the panamanian jungle, one community is using black soldier flies to eliminate food waste of all kinds. watch now to see how meat, dairy, and even bones are rapidly decomposed by these specialized larvae.

how trader joe’s fights food waste

food waste is a major global issue. in the united states alone, its estimated that up to 40% of food produced ends up in the garbage. the negative impacts are multifold: not only are there many hungry people in need of said food, but throwing away food is also major waste of resources required for food production and transportation. furthermore, food that ends up in landfills contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change.

as a commitment to managing their environmental impact while helping their local store communities, trader joe’s has one of the most impressive food waste management programs among grocery store chains in the country. 

working with feeding america, the long-standing food donation program starts in the store. each day, items that are set to expire the next day are pulled from the shelves, scanned, properly stored, and make their way to a local food pantry or food recovery program. that means 100% of food that is “not fit for sale but safe for consumption” is donated. this includes items like day-of expiring foods, dented cereal boxes, cartons of eggs that may have a single cracked egg, and pieces of misshapen produce.

the process

the food donation process, like all things trader joe’s, is thoughtfully run, and executed with a smile. each and every trader joe’s store has a donation coordinator, who oversees food handling within the store, as well as delivery to local food pantries and food recovery programs. every crew member shares the responsibility of pulling products they see unfit for sale, scanning them for inventory reasons, and storing them according to temperature.

stores further separate food items by type to make it easier for pantries to organize what they receive. employees have also been known to visit food banks to see if anything else can be done to improve or streamline the process.

the operation runs seven days a week, most days of the year (aside from major holidays during which trader joe’s is closed). while it would be easier, and faster, to toss most of these products in the trash as opposed to track, store, and ensure their delivery, the grocer’s commitment to the program has made an impressive impact: in 2017 alone, the grocery store chain donated 70 million pounds of food, worth nearly $350 million. according to feeding america, that’s nearly 58 million meals.  

so why doesn’t every store donate their food?

trader joe’s is able to write off the donation as a tax break — making it a win-win situation for everyone involved — which begs the question: why don’t all grocery stores donate their food?

turns out, there are a couple reasons. first, many mistakenly believe the process to be a liability: that if people get sick from the donated food, the company will be held responsible and be subject to legal action. but that actually isn’t true. in 1996, congress passed the bill emerson good samaritan food donation act, which protects companies who donate food in good faith from civil or criminal liability.

many stores also don’t wish to bother with the logistics of the process. donating food requires tracking and properly store donations, and ensuring they make their way to a reputable food bank. this requires a significant amount of time and effort, and not every store has the staff, space, or desire to maintain a donation program.

some stores just may not know how to go about it. only 12 states have established guidelines for food donations. a lack of proper guidance or information may deter many willing grocers from participating.

what we can learn from trader joe’s

trader joe’s impressive food donation program is inspiring, and something many regular shoppers aren’t even aware of. spreading the word and asking about donation programs in your local stores could spark conversations into meaningful food recovery programs like the one at trader joe’s.

and, their program is a wonderful reminder that strangely shaped produce, day-of expiring goods, and less-than-beautiful boxes are still perfectly safe forms of nourishment. and that’s something we can all raise a spoonful of cookie butter to.

this was late july of 2017: exhausted from farm work and eager for a break in the shade, my coworkers and i were more than happy to indulge our manager in watching this menacing-looking fly lay her eggs.

the university farm in sewanee can afford these small breaks and experiments. subsidized by the university of the south, the farm was reestablished in 2012 as a research and hands-on learning opportunity for undergraduate students, like christopher hornsby, who has been intentionally breeding these ‘black soldier flies’ on the farm for over two years, harvesting their maggots.

these flies’ larvae are grown on a commercial scale across the united states for fish and chicken feed, but chris’s project focuses on what the larvae can feed on: once hatched, these larvae fatten for two weeks before emerging as adults, eating twice their own weight every 20-24 hours. to chris, and to many small farmers, this can be an invaluable service. reducing whatever mass of food waste given to them by ninety percent, the flies would expedite the university’s composting process by weeks, if not months, and allow the farm to accept 400-500 pounds of food waste from sewanee’s dining facilities every day.

an impressive metabolism hardly signifies the soldier fly as unique; most larvae can consume a large amount compared to their own mass. but many species’ adult flies can damage the local environment or become a nuisance to humans if their populations get out of hand, so it took a few weeks of research for chris to find the right fit for sewanee’s ecosystem.

“they’re very harmless,” chris explained; “when it becomes an adult fly it sheds the inner lining of its gut, expelling any hazardous microorganisms. and it loses its mouth. so it’s got no mouth, meaning it’s not a disease vector,  it’s not a crop pest, and they won’t swarm in houses, usually, unless you’ve got a mountain of food waste in there. and they die after two to three days.” he paused momentarily, and added almost as an afterthought,  “they’re also native to the entire western hemisphere. ”

but even this fly isn’t perfect. according to a pair of uga entomologists’ research from 1984, 99.6% of egg-laying takes place from 81.5° to 99.5°, and the university of windsor released a study from 2010 suggesting that the larvae’s ideal developmental environment has about 70% relative humidity. although a tennessee july easily provides these conditions, only tropical climates can host them year-round. the seasonality of the larvae may not be a problem to small farmers hoping to establish their own backyard colony because most agricultural systems dwindle as winter encroaches, anyway. but at sewanee, the converse is true: winter is when all 2,000 students are huddled together in the same dining hall, and it’s when the farm grows the most greens and accepts the most food waste. so chris’s project comes down to controlling climate, which would allow the flies’ reproduction and developmental cycle to continue through the farm’s busiest season.

chris and carolyn have worked on multiple prototypes for smaller weather-controlled breeding boxes, but in the summer of 2017 the university’s domain management raised a pole barn for the farm to house tractors, large equipment, and gave them the space to accommodate a room full of soldier flies. so chris’s project has shifted from research to construction, as he tries to plan and prepare an insulated and vermin-proof home for his maggots.

“i don’t know how to vermin-proof a building, but i’m learning. but it’s just me, and i can’t do that kind of construction on my own. if i had more time and more people and more skills… it would all be very helpful.”

since he graduates in 2019, chris’s project might not be completed soon enough for him to see it. with preliminary research finished and finding success in smaller-scale larvae breeding, now he needs to build the larvae a home. as a full-time student he can only work eight hours a week on the farm, which limits a project that is now so contingent on major construction work.

however close his graduation looms, he is confident that another student will bear the torch after him. once it’s finished, he sees sewanee’s waste management system as a model that can be used by other small farms across the country, like bill keener’s sequatchie cove farm.

keener, a dairy, poultry, and vegetable farmer outside of sewanee, is intrigued by chris’s work. sold at first by the prospect of self-producing chicken feed, he’s now hoping to do research about a small-scale implementation of a soldier fly colony in his farmland.

“maybe i could find an easy and big enough source of food waste to feed them with. maybe i could talk to local public schools.”

keener typically feeds his hogs excess whey from his dairy operation, and if the public school falls through as a food source, he may be able to use the whey as a substrate for soldier fly growth. the soldier flies would create an organic alternative to grain chicken feed, which would lower the price of his organic eggs and increase his competitivity in the local organic market.

“i think it’s a good project for me. for a homestead, it’d just make sense.”

the food recovery network is working to change that.

since 2011, the non-profit collects food from dining halls and catering companies at the end of the day and brings them to area shelters and partners so the food can be put to good use. since their inception, the food recovery network has recovered more than 1.8 million meals from ending up in landfills. 

according to the usda, roughly 30-40% of the food produced in the united states goes to waste. in addition to manufacturing waste, and about 31% of the total food loss occurs in the hands of retailers and consumers. this includes food wasted in grocery stores, at home, and in restaurants.

achieving low or no waste is a challenge for restaurants. even if a restaurant sources local and sustainable ingredients, a great deal of waste occurs at the front end of the house. often, consumers order large quantities of food and don’t finish them. moreover, diners expect aesthetically pleasing and large portioned meals, as well as consistency in taste, texture, and appearance for every dining experience, adding additional challenges to reducing waste in restaurant settings.

a creative alternative to waste

thankfully, some chefs are stepping up to the plate when it comes to sustainable dining. chef jehangir mehta is a former runner-up on food network’s next iron chef and a zero waste restaurant pioneer. his widely-acclaimed restaurant, graffiti earth, is nestled in the heart of tribeca, manhattan, where diners enjoy creative, sustainably-sourced meals in an enchanting atmosphere.

i had the pleasure of speaking to chef jehangir mehta and learning more about the initiatives he has taken to commit to sustainable dining, and quickly learned that every detail of his restaurant, from the burger recipe to the dining placemats, is a result of thoughtful eco-minded decision making.

the eclectic menu at graffiti earth is filled with enticing plant-forward dishes, like zucchini hummus pizza, garlic coconut soup with chickpea caviar, and scallop brulee with cauliflower wasabi yogurt.

while the menu may read as an ordinary upscale new york restaurant, a closer look reveals a carefully crafted and creative collection of sustainable dishes.

incorporating the misfits

chef mehta consciously seeks out produce that may go unloved in other eateries, looking past aesthetic misshapes by sourcing unusable produce scraps from vendors who consider awkwardly shaped fruits and vegetables unuseable, and from other chefs who cannot use fruits or vegetables in their entirety.

the otherwise neglected produce gets put to use in soups and entrees on the menu, which is vegetable-focused, with animal proteins served on the side as a nod to sustainability.

when it comes to the meats and seafood that do appear on the menu, chef mehta seeks underutilized seafood that often goes to waste, and is careful to insure that all seafood served has been sourced in a manner that does not disrupt oceanic health.

the scallop brulee, for example, is crafted from broken scallops, given new life in an upscale entree. without careful cooking techniques and an open mind, these scallops likely would have gone to waste. even the burger on graffiti earth’s menu is made up of more mushrooms than beef, demonstrating an inventive way to stretch a carbon-costly food item with one that’s more climate friendly.

the coconut-based soup is ever-changing; it’s a creation based on whatever vegetable scraps are currently available, proving that good food doesn’t have to be consistent – it just has to be delicious.

graffiti earth also sources used espresso grounds from birch coffee and uses them to give a distinct espresso flavor to ice cream in the restaurant’s persian toast, butterscotch & irish coffee cream dessert dish.

many of the dishes served at graffiti earth are made from ingredients that would be turned down by other chefs. but with proper care and preparation, one chef’s trash becomes another chef’s treasure, delighting diners and the planet alike. 

dinnerware and utensils vary between place setting, and showcase a collection of gifts and hand-me-downs sourced from friends and family. meals are served on recycled newspaper rather than disposable tablecloths, offering diners a recyclable dining surface and a memorable eating experience. 

graffiti earth is a not only a great place to eat, it’s delicious proof that sustainable eating doesn’t have to be defined by strict dietary labels or new technology. it can be defined by create compassion, a little planning, and a lot of imagination.

chef jehangir mehta proves that effective change doesn’t have to happen over night. incremental changes over time can add up to a monumental impact. his steady approach to sustainability offers inspiration to those intimidated by large lifestyle changes. or at the very least, an eating establishment to enjoy an eco-friendly meal.

between 30% and 40% of food is wasted per month in the united states. the entire food process and moving food from production to our homes takes up about 10% of the u.s. energy budget. it is clear that reducing food waste will not only create mass monetary savings within our food industry but also reduce our carbon footprint and better the health of our communities.

to do my part, i began working with manjia, a non-profit whose goal is to reduce food waste. i figured that getting businesses to donate leftover foods would be an easy sell. to my surprise, not every restaurant, catering company, or business was willing to sign up with manjia and reduce their food waste. they were either hesitant to sign up for a resource which they had never heard of before or they did not seem to believe that they created enough waste to use manjia’s services.

i began developing a “pitch” that i used when i cold called or emailed potential donors. in the pitch, i included statistics about the impact food waste has on the environment, social inequalities, and the economy. by targeting three pillars rather than only one, i was more successful in my food donor search. every business is fueled by a different set of values. some were more willing to sign up for manjia when they heard about the impact food waste had on the environment, or when they heard about how they could help their local community. most companies also were inclined to sign up when i mentioned that the donation could be as small as a single sandwich or as large as an entire buffet. plus, they are not in charge of transport. 

my experience with manjia has led me to understand that people value sustainability for different reasons. for some people or companies the incentive to joining manjia is environmental concern and for others there is a social justice concern. when calling potential food donors i try to give a general pitch that highlights the environmental, social justice, and economic benefit to manjia and to living sustainably. as i get to know the potential client better, i tailor my approach to whatever lens of sustainability seems to appeal to them the most.

all of the potential clients that i speak to are in the food industry, but their similarities often end there. understanding the different pillars of sustainability is crucial for communicating its importance to others. incentive is everything when it comes to spreading the message of sustainability.