10 Tips to Reduce Food Waste at Home

Most of us know when food is being wasted at home. The harder part is knowing which habits to change first.

Maybe you regularly buy more than you use, forget what’s already in the fridge, or end up with leftovers nobody gets around to eating. Whatever the pattern, reducing food waste usually comes down to a few practical changes in how you plan, shop, store and cook.

Gousto’s Sustainability Manager Danielle Crompton tells us that “WRAP estimates the average household of four wastes around £1,000 a year on food that gets thrown away, so there’s a lot to gain from taking a bit more control.”

So, with the help of Danielle, we’ve shared 11 tips that are designed to help you spot where waste is happening, and make small changes that are easier to stick to.

Planning meals in advance is one of the most effective ways to ensure you only buy what you need, to help reduce food waste. If you want tasty meals with maximum convenience, Gousto’s weekly meal planning can take the admin off your plate. Choose recipes to suit your household and your schedule, then get the perfectly pre-portioned ingredients delivered to your door.

11 Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste at Home

1. Start By Understanding Where Food Is Being Wasted in Your Kitchen

Before changing how you shop or cook, it helps to notice where food is being wasted most often. We like to think of this as a mini food waste audit.

You might regularly buy more fresh food than you get through, cook too much rice or pasta, forget opened ingredients, or plan meals for evenings when you rarely end up cooking.

Then, you can tackle the part of your routine that’s causing the most waste, and build from there.

2. Shop Your Kitchen Before You Plan

Check what you already have prior to your food shops.

Look through the fridge, freezer and cupboards for open packs, leftovers, or vegetables that need using, and you may have forgotten about.

Check use-by and best before dates too, so you can prioritise what needs using first. Foods marked with “use-by” must be eaten before that date from a safety perspective, while “best before” is about quality, you can still eat food after best before dates if it looks, smells, and tastes okay.

Then use those foods to shape one or two meals for the week ahead.

Half a bag of spinach could go into a curry or pasta sauce. A few potatoes might save you buying another side. An open tub of yoghurt could become a dressing or dip.

This helps you avoid buying duplicates and gives food already in the kitchen a clear purpose before you add anything new to the shopping list.

3. Plan Around Your Actual Diary, Not an Ideal Week

A useful meal plan reflects the week you’re actually going to have.

Check who’ll be home, which evenings are busy, and whether there are nights when you’re unlikely to cook. If you’re out on Thursday, and Friday usually becomes takeaway night, there’s little point planning five home-cooked dinners.

Build your plan around the number of meals you realistically expect to make, and leave a little flexibility where it helps. One open dinner slot can give you space to use leftovers or move a meal if plans change.

The aim isn’t to plan every detail. It’s to avoid buying food for meals that were never likely to happen.

4. Shop for the Meals You’ve Actually Planned

Once you know how many meals you’re cooking, turn that plan into a meal plan and shopping list.

Write down the ingredients you need for those meals, then check quantities before you buy. If two dinners use the same ingredient, one pack might cover both. If you only need a small amount of something, think about whether the rest has another job later in the week.

This is where meal planning starts to reduce waste in practice: you’re buying food with a clear purpose, rather than filling the trolley first and working out what to cook afterwards.

5. Store Food So You Can Use It in Time

Once the shopping is unpacked, make it easy to see what needs using first.

Follow the storage instructions on the packaging, and keep shorter-life ingredients, opened packs, and leftovers somewhere visible rather than letting them disappear at the back of the fridge. A dedicated shelf or small “use first” area can work well.

That way, when you’re deciding what to cook or grab for lunch, the ingredients that need your attention are right in front of you.

A clear fridge setup can make those ingredients much easier to spot and use before they’re forgotten. Additionally, ensuring your fridge is the right temperature can help food last longer. The average fridge in the UK is set at 7°C, which is 2°C too warm, keep your fridge between 0°C and 5°C.

6. Get a Feel for the Portions Your Household Actually Eats

Use this food portion calculator as a starting point when figuring out your portion sizes.

Rice is a classic example of a food that’s easy to overestimate. A few extra handfuls don’t look like much in the pan, then suddenly you’ve cooked enough to feed another family.

As a useful starting point, Love Food Hate Waste suggests around 65g of dried rice per adult. Children’s portions vary more by age and appetite, so their guidance breaks these down by age group rather than using one catch-all amount.

Use those amounts as a guide, then adjust them to what your household actually eats. If plates regularly come back with rice left on them, try cooking a little less next time. For children, serving a smaller portion first and offering seconds can help when appetites change from day to day.

And if you’re deliberately cooking extra for tomorrow’s lunch or the freezer, portion that out with a plan in mind.

7. Give Leftovers a Job Straight Away

If you’ve got extra left over, decide what it’s for while you’re clearing up.

That might mean portioning some into a container for tomorrow’s lunch, freezing a serving for another night, or turning it into something different the next day. Leftover chilli could become a jacket potato topping, roast vegetables can go into a grain bowl, and cooked chicken can be added to noodles or a salad.

It helps to be specific and intentional. “I’ll use this tomorrow for lunch” is much more useful than putting a container in the fridge and hoping you remember what it was for.

If your household is happy eating the same dinner two days in a row, that’s useful too. Portion it while it’s fresh and make the next meal easy.

Double-check guidance around reheating your leftovers.

8. Use Your Freezer Before Food Gets Forgotten

If you know you won’t use something in time, move it to the freezer while it still feels useful, rather than as a last-minute rescue.

Freeze food in portions that make sense for your household. Bread can go in as slices, sauces can be split into meal-sized containers, and cooked dishes can be portioned before freezing so you only defrost what you need.

Label containers with what’s inside and the date they went in. That makes it much easier to plan them back into future meals.

It’s also worth checking the freezer before you plan the next week’s dinners. A frozen portion only helps if it eventually makes its way back onto the menu.

Read this guide for more information about how to freeze and defrost food safely.

9. Share Surplus Food Before It Goes to Waste

Sometimes you know you’re not going to get through something in time, even if it’s still perfectly good to eat.

If that happens, offer it to friends, family, or neighbours before it becomes waste. Food-sharing apps can also help you pass suitable surplus food on locally.

They can work the other way too. Apps such as Too Good To Go connect you with shops, cafés, and restaurants that have surplus food at the end of the day, so you can pick up a surprise bag of food that might otherwise have gone to waste.

It’s a handy way to rescue food from outside your own kitchen too, with the added bonus that you might come home with an unexpected treat.

10. Compost Suitable Food Scraps at Home

If you have a garden or space for a compost bin, some kitchen scraps can be put to use there instead.

Fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, tea leaves, and eggshells are all suitable for home composting. Over time, they break down into compost that can help improve soil structure and add organic matter back into your garden.

Home composting won’t replace your food-waste bin, but it can be a useful option for suitable kitchen scraps you produce regularly.

11. Use Your Food-Waste Bin for What’s Left

Some scraps are edible, and some simply aren’t going to become dinner.

Peelings, eggshells, bones and other inedible bits can go straight into your food-waste bin, so they stay separate from the general rubbish.

Keep cooked food, meat, fish, and dairy out of a standard home compost bin too, as these can attract pests and create problems while they break down.

The main thing is to keep edible food out of there where you can. If something can still be eaten, frozen, or used in another meal, do that first. Save the food-waste bin for bits that are really done with.

Try This Five-Minute Food Check Once a Week

These tips are easier to keep up with when you build them into one quick routine.

Before you plan the next week’s meals, spend five minutes checking:

– The fridge: what’s open, what needs using soon, and what leftovers are still there

– The freezer: whether there’s already a meal, loaf of bread, or portion of sauce you can use

– The cupboards: which staples you already have plenty of

– Your diary: how many meals you’re actually likely to cook at home

Then plan your meals around what you’ve found and shop for the gaps.

You don’t need to strip the cupboards bare or keep exactly seven dinners’ worth of food in the house. The aim is simply to know what you have, know what you need, and give the more perishable food a clear chance of being used first.

What to Do When Your Meal Plan Falls Apart

Even a good meal plan can get knocked off course by a late meeting, a sick child, or an unexpected dinner out with friends.

When that happens, check which ingredients are most time-sensitive before moving meals around. Longer-life ingredients can usually wait, while anything more perishable may need cooking, freezing or moving into another meal first.

If one person is suddenly not eating at home, portion their serving before the rest of dinner goes on the table. That gives you a ready-made lunch or another meal instead of extra food sitting around with no plan.

And if your meal plan regularly ends up being too ambitious, scale it back. Planning four dinners you’re likely to cook can be more useful than planning seven and trying to rescue the ingredients later.

Food Waste FAQs

How Can I Work Out Which Food I Waste Most?

To work out which food you waste the most, spend a week keeping a quick note of the edible food that ends up in the bin or food-waste caddy.

You don’t need to weigh everything. Writing down things like “half a loaf”, “cooked rice” or “salad leaves” is enough to spot patterns.

At the end of the week, look for the main cause. Are you buying too much, cooking too much, or forgetting to use things in time?

Once you know where most of your waste is coming from, you can focus there first.

How Can Families Reduce Food Waste When Everyone Eats Different Amounts?

Keeping on top of food waste and portion sizes can be tricky when everyone at the table has a different appetite.

Start by serving a little less and keep some food back for seconds. That can be especially useful with children, whose appetites can change from one day to the next.

For meals that divide easily, such as chilli, curry, or pasta sauce, portion any obvious extras before serving. That way, they’re already set aside for lunch, another dinner or the freezer instead of becoming scraps from partly eaten plates.

It also helps to plan around who’ll actually be home. After-school clubs, late work nights, and weekend plans can all change how much food you really need.

When Should I Freeze Food Instead of Refrigerating It to Avoid Food Waste?

To know whether the fridge or freezer is the best route to avoid food waste, simply think about when you’re realistically going to eat it.

If you know you’ll use something within the next day or two, and it can be safely stored in the fridge, keep it there. If plans have changed and you’re unlikely to get to it in time, freezing it sooner can give you more flexibility.

Always check the storage instructions first. For food with a use-by date, freeze it on or before that date.

It also helps to freeze food in useful portions, so you can defrost only what you need later.

How Do I Recycle Food Waste at Home?

You can recycle food waste by popping it in a separate food waste caddy. Avoid putting packaging, plastic or other non-food items in the caddy. You can use this tool to find out more about how to recycle food waste in your area, and check your local council’s guidelines for accepted items and collection arrangements.

How a Gousto Meal Box Can Help Reduce Food Waste

If planning food, working out quantities, and shopping for every ingredient is where things tend to get messy, a meal box can make it easier to prep and cook your meals for the week.

With Gousto, you choose the recipes that suit your household and get the pre-portioned ingredients you need for those dinners delivered to your door. Because every ingredient is planned and measured around the meals you’ve picked, that means almost zero food waste, with enough variety to keep the week interesting.

Danielle tells us that “minimising food waste is one of Gousto’s founding principles, and it’s designed into our core business model. We use advanced forecasting to plan our ordering around real demand, and our recipes are pre-portioned, so a lot less food goes to waste. The average Gousto box saves 1.8kg of food waste compared with the equivalent supermarket shop.”

You can choose from over 175 recipes a week, with options including speedy dinners, family favourites, and global flavours. Then, you’ll get the pre-portioned ingredients you need for the meals you’ve picked. This means you can reduce food waste but avoid eating the same meals on repeat (or planning every ingredient down to the last carrot).

And with meals from £3.20 per serving*, you can build a box around the number of meals and portions that suit your household, your week and your budget.

So you get more choice, less guesswork, and a simpler way to plan food for everyone at home.

^{*£3.20 Based on price per portion on a 5 x 4 subscription box. Excl. £3.99 delivery fee & surcharges.}