By Lauren Rutter

Have you ever had the feta dilemma?

Doing your bit for the planet starts at home, so here are the top 5 tips to cut back on the waste coming outta your fridge.

1. Stick to the script!

Ever have that moment at the supermarket when you’re looking at an item – like a block of feta – and you ask yourself, “Do I have feta at home?…I think I might…” but then you can’t remember when you bought it, or if it’s still ok to eat, so you buy a new one anyway. And then, usually, you’ll get home and realise, in fact, you DID have feta in the fridge, and it’s still TOTALLY FINE to eat, so now you’ve got two big blocks of feta and you don’t know how you’ll manage to eat it all.
Write your grocery list in the ‘Notes’ application on your phone, and only buy what’s on the list. That way, if you have a “feta dilemma” you can look back at your past 1 or 2 shopping lists to simply check when you last bought something.

2. Tighten the purse strings

Seems obvious but with 1 in every 5 bags worth of groceries going to landfill in Australia, it’s clearly something we’re pretty rubbish at. Plan out your meals for the week and only buy what you know you’ll eat before your next shop, then leave the rest on the shelf. You’ll reduce waste AND cut your grocery bill. Win-win!

3. Win the invention test

Here’s a fun fact: a head of lettuce takes a few short months to decompose in compost, but it takes 25 years to break down in landfill. This is because air and moisture are essential for healthy decomposition, something tightly-packed landfills don’t have a lot of.
So what can you do with the fruit and veggies that are neeeearly no good? Why not pretend you’re on an episode of Masterchef and find a creative way to turn the odds and ends into something delicious. Put the veggies in a soup, salad or an omelette. Put the fruit in a smoothie or cake. Push yourself to come up with something Gary, Matt and George would applaud you for.

4. You (j)ar what you eat

Plastic cling wrap is not our friend. It’s notoriously difficult to recycle, which means it usually goes straight to landfill. Instead, “store smarter” by popping your leftovers in a glass jar or airtight container. Get next-level smart and use a marker to write a “Best Before” date on each container so you know what to eat first.

5. Don’t get too saucy

There’s a shelf in every fridge where condiments go to die. It’s the top shelf in my house. No one’s brave enough to use anything on that shelf because it’s a mystery how long those products have been there. To reduce your fridge waste, you need to clean the slate: know what you have in the fridge and be strict about using condiments up before buying new ones. As the saying goes, “You can have some sauces, some of the time, but not all sauces, all of the time” (pretty sure that’s how the saying goes?)…

Sharing’s caring! Share this post to help your friends cut their waste too.

By Lauren Rutter