After watching the War on Waste on Tuesday night on ABCTV (thanks Craig Reucassel and your team – about time someone produced an attention seeking, informative documentary about this issue) I opened the bread tin to find the gluten-free bread I had made on the weekend had gone mouldy. Anyway, determined not to add to the food waste statistics, I chopped all the mouldy crusts off, popped them in the compost bin, and made avocado on toast.

Then, I went out for a special treat with Mum, Nana and a good friend who was in town, and we ordered the cafe’s signature dish as part of the secret sweet trail that the Mackay Regional Council is currently running as part of a bit of a ‘enjoy the region’ campaign. I think that one element that was missed in last night’s documentary  is the size of meals that are served at restaurants and cafes.  The mocha brownie sandwich was HUGE. We could have shared 1 between 4 and instead we had 2 between 3 and ended up wasting some.

And it’s happened recently with kids’ meals too. Admittedly, our daughter is only 2 but one of the pasta meals I ordered at a local sports club was enough to have some at the restaurant, then I took it home and managed to have 2 more meals from it! Meal sizes should be more realistic. No wonder we have an obesity epidemic.

I’d like to know where the food wastage statistics came from? $3500.00 is a lot of money to waste each year, per household. Especially when trying to keep to a budget. I know we can’t afford to be wasting that much money when we have a mortage to pay. So the question is, are we? I’d really like to record how much we waste. Having said that, hardly any food goes into the general waste bin. We have a dog, so he gets a lot of scraps, and then we have a compost and a worm farm.

I try to use left over veggies in a batch of vegetable or minestrone soup or I make a vegetable stock paste.

We’re not perfect but I hate to think of all the food that goes to landfill and contributes to the methane gas issue.