Seven ways to throw out less food

Plan the week around what is already there

Open the fridge before you write the list, not after. Building two or three meals around what is already in there is the single biggest lever, because the food most likely to be thrown out is food you bought and then forgot you had.

Write the list and hold to it

A list takes four minutes and stops the impulse buys that rot in the drawer. Keep it on your phone and add to it through the week as things run out, so you are never reconstructing it in the aisle.

Treat leftovers as an ingredient

Reheating the same plate twice is why leftovers get binned. Change the form instead. Roasted vegetables blend into soup, cooked grains fry into a breakfast bowl, and almost anything savoury goes into a wrap with a sauce.

Use the freezer properly

Freeze it before it turns, not after you notice it has. Herbs freeze in oil in an ice cube tray, bread freezes sliced, and most cooked food freezes flat in a bag. Label everything with the date, because an unlabelled freezer is just a slower bin.

Store things where they actually keep

• Keep ethylene producers away from the rest. Apples, bananas, avocados and tomatoes give off a ripening gas that spoils whatever sits next to them.
• Greens keep four or five days longer washed, dried and stored with a dry tea towel in the container to absorb moisture.
• Grains, pasta and flour go in airtight containers, not open bags.
• Leftovers go in airtight containers in the fridge within two hours of cooking.

Buy the ugly produce

A bent carrot cooks identically to a straight one and usually costs less. Buying it keeps food that was never going to fail a taste test from being rejected on looks alone.

Donate what you cannot use

Unopened, in-date food you know you will not get to is worth more at a food bank or a community fridge than in your cupboard. Calgary has both, and they will tell you what they can and cannot take.