House & Home

How To Reduce Food Waste At Home

Plan your shopping, store food so it lasts, understand use-by and best before dates, and freeze and reuse leftovers safely to cut waste and save money.

Kaan Rassad

Published on 1st December 2024

Throwing away food means throwing away money, and most of it can be avoided with a few simple habits. This guide shows you how to reduce food waste at home, from planning your shopping and storing food properly to understanding date labels, freezing what you won’t eat in time and making the most of leftovers.

Why Food Waste At Home Adds Up

WRAP, the charity behind the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, estimates that wasted food costs an average household of four around £1,000 a year. Fresh fruit and vegetables are a big part of the problem: around 2.5 million tonnes are thrown away from UK homes each year, and about 1.7 million tonnes of that could have been eaten. Potatoes are the most binned item, with almost half of those bought ending up in the bin.

The good news is that small changes at each stage, from the shop to the fridge to the freezer, make a real difference.

How To Reduce Food Waste When You Plan And Shop

Planning is the simplest way to stop buying food you won’t use.

Check what you already have. Base your meal plan on what is in your fridge, freezer and cupboards first. Taking a quick photo of your fridge before you go out helps you avoid doubling up.
Write a list and stick to it. Buy for the meals you have planned, not what looks tempting.
Buy loose where you can. Loose fruit and vegetables let you buy exactly the amount you need.
Be wary of multibuy offers on fresh food. They are only a saving if you will eat it all before it goes off.
Allow for changes of plan. Meals that get replaced by a takeaway or a night out are a common cause of waste, so keep a flexible meal or two in the plan.

Love Food Hate Waste has a helpful guide to meal planning and batch cooking, with ideas that work for any size of household.

Store Food So It Lasts Longer

Keeping your fridge at the right temperature is one of the easiest wins. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recommends between 0°C and 5°C, and Love Food Hate Waste says getting it into this range can keep food fresh for up to three days longer. Our guide to what temperature your fridge should be explains how to check it and how to organise each shelf.

Apples, berries and citrus fruit last longer in the fridge.
Bananas are best kept in the fruit bowl, away from other fruit, as they can speed up ripening nearby.
Bread, cucumbers and tomatoes can lose quality in the fridge.
Keep milk on a shelf rather than in the door, which is one of the warmest parts of the fridge.
Use a cool bag to bring chilled and frozen food home from the shops.

Use-By And Best Before Dates Explained

Understanding date labels stops you throwing out perfectly good food and helps you avoid eating food that isn’t safe.

Use-By Dates Are About Safety

A use-by date tells you when food is no longer safe to eat. You will find it on foods that go off quickly, such as meat products and ready-to-eat salads. Don’t eat food after its use-by date, even if it looks and smells fine. You can, however, cook it or freeze it before the date to make it last longer.

Best Before Dates Are About Quality

A best before date tells you when food might start to lose quality. It appears on things like dried, tinned and frozen foods. After this date, food is usually safe to eat but may not be at its best, so use your eyes and nose to judge it. GOV.UK has a clear summary of best before and use-by dates.

Freeze Food Before It Goes Off

Your freezer is the best tool you have for cutting waste. The FSA says you can freeze food right up until midnight on its use-by date, and the freezer should be around -18°C. If you are replacing an old fridge freezer, our guide to appliance energy efficiency explains how to compare running costs.

What Freezes Well

Far more freezes well than most people expect, including meat, fish, bread, cheese, milk, cream, eggs, cake, nuts, pulses, rice, pasta, herbs, fruit and vegetables. A few tips:

Cooked rice: cool it quickly and freeze within an hour in an airtight container.
Cheese: grated or in a block, it can be frozen for up to six months.
Eggs: crack them into a container, whisk, then seal and label.
Bread crusts: blitz them into breadcrumbs and freeze for later.
Herbs: chop and freeze in ice cube trays with a little water.

What Doesn’t Freeze Well

Foods with a high water content, such as lettuce and cucumber, go limp and soggy when defrosted. Hard-boiled eggs turn rubbery, and egg-based sauces like mayonnaise can curdle.

Freezing Tips

Let cooked food cool before freezing it.
Use airtight containers or freezer bags to prevent freezer burn.
Leave space at the top of containers, because liquids such as soup expand as they freeze.
Label everything with what it is and the date.

Make The Most Of Leftovers

Leftovers are ready-made meals if you handle them safely.

Cool leftovers and get them into the fridge within one to two hours of cooking.
Eat them within 48 hours or freeze them.
Defrost frozen food in the fridge or with the microwave’s defrost setting, not on the worktop, and eat it within 24 hours.
Once you have cooked food from frozen, you can freeze it again, but only reheat it once after that. Cooked rice should only be reheated once.
Reheat until piping hot all the way through.

Batch cooking helps too. Pasta sauces, curries, chilli, soups and lasagne all freeze well in portions, giving you homemade ready meals and using up ingredients that might otherwise be forgotten.

When To Call An Engineer

A fridge or freezer that won’t hold its temperature can spoil a whole week’s shopping. If your fridge will not stay at 5°C or below, food is going off early, or the freezer is struggling to keep things frozen, unplug it before any cleaning and don’t attempt electrical repairs yourself. Local engineers such as S&D Ireland can find the fault, and they cover appliance repairs in Aintree as well as other parts of Merseyside and West Lancashire.