Diane has devised a way to cut down on her family’s food waste which also saves her money on her shopping bill.
She tells her story:
“I really hate food waste. When you are buying all that food I’d rather use it than waste it.”
“If we have any left-overs or extra pieces of food, I make sure I put them in date-marked plastic containers in the fridge for later use. That way we keep an eye on the dates to make sure it is used while still in a good state and never wasted. Without dates you find you can’t remember how long it has been in the fridge and it ends up being thrown out.”
“I also keep a lot of food in the freezer so it doesn’t get wasted. I probably freeze more than other people. I like using everything.”
“Also I buy things when they are on “special” and freeze them for later.”
Diane started date-marking food containers about fifteen years ago after her husband John had a couple of bouts of food poisoning from when they had been out for meals.
“We had to be very careful about what he ate, so I started putting the dates on the containers in the fridge. It led on from there.”
“These days we very rarely have any waste from the fridge or the pantry.”
“I have two boys – they are 19 and 22 now – and they do it too, as well as John. They can see the sense behind it.”
“I know that by date marking our food that we use all the food we buy and consequently we have saved a lot of money over the years.”
