Food rescue
Food rescue means keeping edible food out of the bin – at home through planning, storage and using up leftovers, and out and about by sharing.
Ausführlich erklärt
According to Germany's Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), around 11 million tonnes of food end up in the bin in Germany every year – about 59% of it in private households, which works out at roughly 78 kilograms per person. Food rescue tackles exactly that: how we shop, how we store food and what we do with whatever is left over.
The biggest lever is surprisingly unspectacular: check your fridge and cupboards before you go shopping, and shop with a list. The foods thrown away most often are fruit and vegetables, bread and baked goods, and leftovers from the plate. If you shop in smaller amounts but more often, you'll throw less away – bulk packs are only worth it for things that keep, such as rice, lentils or frozen food.
The second lever: the best-before date isn't a throw-away date. Yoghurt, cheese, pasta or chocolate are usually perfectly fine long after it. Look, smell, taste – your senses are the better judge. Only the use-by date (“use by …”) on mince, fresh poultry or raw fish leaves no leeway.
The third lever: leftovers are ingredients. Wilted vegetables become soup or roasted vegetables, stale bread becomes breadcrumbs, croutons or French toast, and brown bananas become banana bread. Frozen, almost everything waits patiently until it's needed. For families, a regular “leftovers day” each week is a playful approach: what have we still got – and what can we make from it?
If you'd like to do more, there are initiatives and apps through which shops and neighbours pass on surplus food. And a side effect that helps with weight loss: if you value food, you eat more mindfully – and you don't clear your plate just because you hate throwing things away. Leftovers belong in a container, not in your stomach.