Happy New Year!
With New Year’s resolutions flying left and right, the first of the year seems like an appropriate time to urge you to limit your household food waste. There’s plenty of room for improvement, about 25 percent of the food that enters our homes is thrown away uneaten (William Rathje, whose Garbage Project tallied Tucson trash, measured that 15 percent of family’s food ended up in their garbage. When he factored in disposals, it was 25 percent. And no, that doesn’t include trimmings like carrot peels). Â
For the full argument on how to limit home waste, you can read my op-ed that ran today in Raleigh’s The News & Observer.
As for me, I’m trying to reduce waste in my house. I’ll be eating leftovers today as I watch some college football bowl games. Can you do the same?
Finally, 2007 marks the unofficial start of this site. I will now update it on a regular basis, and I hope you’ll sign up for the RSS feed or check back periodically.
Comments
2 responses to “Trimming Our Wastes”
Good article, Jon. Nice job summing up the issue and giving some simple tips.
One question for you: is there a good rule of thumb estimate for how long food is good to eat after the “sell by” date? Maybe 1 week like leftovers?
Good luck with the book this year. I’m looking forward to seeing the progress here at the blog (I just subscribed to your feed). I’ve found it to be a great topic of discussion with people — everyone is interested in the facts and has opinions / experiences they think are relevant to curbing waste.
Can’t wait to see you on Oprah!
Thanks for your feedback and encouragement, Brian. It’s a good question you raise, and one I’m wishing I included in the editorial. The short answer is–yes, one week is a good guideline for how long an item is edible past its sell-by date. See the Tuesday, January 2 post for a more detailed discussion.