One of our worst habits is wasting food. Not huge amounts but enough to make me want to change our ways.

Sometimes it’s store-cupboard stuff that goes well out of date without us noticing – stuff we bought on 3-for-2 offers but got bored after the second one, or stuff we bought because we were, for example, eating a lot of nut roasts at that point but then we seemed to forget about them and developed a blind spot around their part of the shelf whenever we looked into the cupboard for something for dinner. Other times, it’s fridge stuff – salad mostly or half-eaten packs of cheese – or stuff that was once store-cupboard but is now fridge stuff: partially used cans of beans or custard that turn before we can use the second half.

We’re not overly fussy eaters and generally regard best before and use by dates as guidelines – if it smells alright and looks alright, we’ll eat it. I’m also happy making soup, chillis and curries out of misc things that need eating, and we’ve tried to cut down the very short-life veg we buy: we’re going to grow pick-and-come-again lettuces in our new-house sun-porch and realised that in many places a pickled pepper or the like will serve just as well as fresh. But I still think there is more we could be doing.

What do you do to make sure you don’t waste food? Do you only buy for a couple of meals at a time? Do you plan weekly menus that you stick to? Do you have procedures to make sure you use up cupboard items in a timely manner? Love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

We’ve had an email from Lynda:

How can I get my colleagues to waste less energy without being seen as a nag? Everyone always turns the heating on instead of bringing a jumper and then when it gets too hot, they open a window instead of turning the heating down! It drives me mad!

It would drive me mad too but AT LEAST they’re opening a window instead of cranking up the air conditioning at the same time as the heating ;)

When I used to work full time in an office, I always made sure I had a cardigan over the back of my chair for those chilly days – but it’s not like you can forceably wrap an office-mate in a woolly when the temperature drops.

I’d possibly try talking to management about it – in a general way rather than tattle-tailing. If you’re in a small company, you can appeal to them on a financial level since all that wasted energy is wasted money. Bigger companies might not care about that because it’s such a small proportion of their turnover – but most big companies have an environmental policy now and that might sway them.

Of course getting management on board doesn’t mean that the rest of the staff will comply and in some places, a management decree will do the opposite… so what else could Lynda try?

Has anyone had any experience of encouraging reluctant colleagues to change their ways? What works without getting people’s backs up? What doesn’t?

There is a lot of chatter in the US and the UK at the moment about putting a “tax” on plastic carrier bags to stop shops giving them out willy-nilly.

There is already a charge in place in Ireland and I read something the other day that explained while the amount of carrier bags given out by shops has dropped dramatically, the number of bin liners and garbage bags sold has increased because so many people used to reuse the carriers in the bin. That makes it feel like less of a victory – and it’s not exactly a huge victory to start with.

The thought of buying something to use to aid throwing stuff away seems really counter-intuitive to my brain but without using bin liners or the like, we’re constantly having to scrub out our kitchen bin with pretty harsh chemicals – we’re not big wasters, we compost as much as we can and most packaging we get is recyclable, so usually the only things that end up in there are pretty yacky.

So is there a line between disposable plastic bags and endless bleachy scrubbing? I thought about newspapers – a sheet as a throwaway liner would probably be fine for all but the wettest stuff – but since we don’t buy them either, that’s not an option really – what is?

We’ve had a email from Jo:

Love the new Reduce This thing. I’ve got a question about babywipes. At home we use wash cloths for wiping sticky faces and hands but those little packs of disposable wipes are so much more convenient when we’re out and about. Does anyone have any alternatives?

You could put a damp cloth in an old re-sealable baby wipe container – either a thick washcloth or thinner clothes like hankies. They probably would get mouldy if left in there for more than a few hours though so you’d would have to get into the habit of remembering to take them out again after your excursion.

There is, of course, always the spit-on-a-hankie method much loved in mum-stereotypes too ;)

Any other suggestions? What did your mum/grandma do?

Alice’s last “Reduce This” question is:

How to reduce the energy I use in cooking.

I’ve started putting any extra water I boil in the kettle into a thermos flask ready for the next cup of tea, but there must be loads of other ways to cut this down too.

We talked about ways to make the most out of boiled water back during our water week for World Water Day in March but I like this new focus on energy.

The biggest thing I think is using pan lids where possible – it amazes me how much less gas is needed to keep something at a rolling boil when there is a lid on the pan. I’d also recommend getting a range of pan sizes and using the most appropriate one for the task in hand particularly when boiling things in water – boiling eggs (which required a certain depth of water no matter what the diameter of the pan) being a prime example.

What have you tried? What works? What doesn’t?

Has anyone tried alternative cooking methods to cut down on fossil fuel use such as solar ovens?