Key points
- Fresh fruit and veg is one of the largest sources of food waste from a typical household.
- There are ways we can reduce waste of our perishable foods such as fruit and vegetables.
- Buying only what you need at once is a great way to help manage your food budget and waste.
With inflation pushing up prices across the board, household budgets are increasingly under pressure too. Many simply can’t afford to waste anything. Fresh fruit and veg is one of the largest sources of food waste from a typical household – think mushy bananas, slimy lettuce, limp celery and mouldy oranges.
How can we cut down on fruit and veg waste to make our budgets stretch that little bit further? Here are some tips and tricks for getting fresh with your fridge!
Keeping the veggies crunchy
When veggies go soft or wrinkly, it usually means they are losing water through their skins. That's why storing veggies in your fridge's crisper drawer is important. It creates a high-humidity microclimate that slows down this water loss.
If you’re getting too much condensation in the crisper drawer, throw in a clean paper towel and replace it every few days.
No crisper drawer? No worries
If your fridge doesn’t have a crisper drawer, you can make your own high-humidity microclimate!
Keep crunchy veggies in a reusable plastic bag or wrap them up with cling wrap. To prevent condensation, make sure the bag is not tightly closed. This allows the release of the ripening gas ethylene oxide. Store fruit and veg on a higher shelf than meat so any leaking meat juices can’t drip onto fresh foods.
Too cool for school or too hot to handle
The crisper drawer is often the coldest part of the fridge, and some models overdo the chill. If there’s ice or ooze in your crisper drawer, try raising the fridge’s temperature setting a notch or two (you will save a bit on your electricity bill too). But don’t go too far – household fridges should sit between 5-3 degrees Celsius.
Not sure what the actual temperature is? Pick up a digital fridge thermometer at your local electrical store for less than the cost of a Sunday brunch.
Fruit, meet freezer
Most fruit freezes really well, and that includes tomatoes (yes, they are fruits!). If your bananas are going brown, peel them and chuck them in the freezer (whole, cut, or mashed) for the next time you’re making banana cake. Tomatoes going soft? Freeze ‘em! Frozen tomatoes (whole or cut, fresh or blanched) make great sauce for your next Italian-inspired masterpiece. Or is that ‘pasta-piece’?
Farting fruit: tackling overripening
Did you know that some fruits get gassy when they ripen? Bananas, melons, pears, avocados and potatoes produce ethylene gas when they’re ripe. The ethylene can then set off other fruits and veggies to ripen faster and go off sooner.
But we can use it to our advantage. If you want to ripen an unripe pear or avocado, chuck it in a bag with a ripe yellow banana. Otherwise keep the gassy fruits in a well-ventilated spot separate from the ethylene-sensitive ones. Ethylene-sensitive foods include avocado, broccoli, carrots and leafy greens and unripe bananas. Bananas switch from ethylene-sensitive to ethylene producers as they ripen.