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No one in their right mind likes food waste, it's always with a lump in the throat that food goes into the bin at my house and if it can somehow be reconstituted, reused or rehashed - even as something that doesn't remotely resemble the original ingredient - it will be.
Food waste is a growing problem around the world as millions of people a day go hungry and tones of food every day is wasted. In 2012 a Food Waste Bill proposed by an MP in the UK Parliament cited that around 50% of edible food in Europe was actually wasted.
But what can we do to help reduce are own food waste and what is being done around the world to help combat the problem? Here's a look at some of the interesting tips, tricks and technologies that are helping reduce food waste.
Tackling Trash - With the rise of free information available at our fingertips and a new focus on healthy, sustainable living - there's no denying that one of the biggest factors in reducing our food waste is education. As more of us learn techniques to combat the problem we can collectively reduce waste on a large scale. There are hundreds of great resources online to help, including:
10 Tips on What to Do With Stale Bread
42 Food and How to Store Them Correctly
Understanding Food Sell By Dates
Artistic Trash - There's thousands of artists around the world who have found great uses for waste food. A table made entirely of breadsticks, the breathtaking images of decaying food from the photographer Klaus Pichler (seen above) and the inspiring portraits created by Scott Gundersen using used wine corks.
Tech Trash - Ever throw away that bottle of tomato sauce only to notice just how much is left in the bottom of the bottle? How much is left crusting around the top? A team of researchers at MIT have developed a special non-stick coating that means every last drop of sauce is easily taken from bottle. No more jabbing a knife in to scrape the remnants of sauce from the bottom as this special coating releases your condiments with ease.
Upcycled Trash - Taking something that's heading for the trash and giving it a whole new lease of life is always impressive and the number of people working on upcycling projects continues to rise. Wasted pizza boxes become beautiful designer lamp shades, a whiskey barrel becomes a guitar, coffee beans used as compost for growing mushrooms and here's a tutorial for turning wine corks into cute mini planters.
There's even a movement looking at using food waste as a form of fuel.
It seems that no matter what we do, unfortunately there will always be the the downright crazy stories like this one of a man who took just one sip of a $13,000 cocktail before wasting the rest.
