It’s no secret that Singaporeans are spoiled for choice when it comes to food. Thanks to the Lion City’s citizens being such a well-travelled bunch, there’s a wide variety of F&B concepts to indulge in. You’re always guaranteed a great meal too, no matter if your purse strings are tight as you approach payday or flush with cash right after that.

And if you were busy cooking up a storm at home during the past year and a half, you’d find that it’s easy to get almost any ingredient you want as well. There are wet markets, supermarkets, and specialty food stores aplenty in the Little Red Dot to help you craft the perfect dish. Unfortunately, with great food comes great waste.

In 2019 alone, Singapore was looking at 744 million kilograms of food waste. For a nation that has under 6 million people living in it, that’s an eye-popping figure. The worst part is that food waste is easily avoidable for the most part, especially when folks were largely at home throughout 2020 and 2021.

How easy is it to avoid food waste at home, you ask? Here are five ways that’ll start you on the path to a zero food wastage future.

1. Don’t over-purchase
2. Use portion sizes as a guide
3. Know your expiry dates
4. Reuse bones, peels, and other scraps
5. Compost

#1 Don’t over-purchase



This sounds incredibly simple and almost silly to mention, right? However, remember that time when you mindlessly filled up your shopping cart at the supermarket? Or how about over-ordering at a restaurant or cafe because you couldn’t think straight while starving? We thought so.

For larger households who prepare their meals daily at home, over-purchasing ingredients isn’t that big a problem. Leftovers can be reheated and eaten over the next two to three days, especially when everyone is working from home. Smaller households naturally have a harder time as there are less people to help out when it comes to finishing up leftover food.

For households that order food frequently, over-ordering can be an issue too. It’s harder to estimate how much a group will eat as compared to an individual. But take the time to track your grocery shopping and meal purchases across a week or month. This then helps you eliminate unnecessary purchases and in turn, reduce food waste.


#2 Use portion sizes as a guide

Whether you’re cooking or dining out, portion sizes are useful in more ways than one. Recipes usually indicate how many people the dish would serve, so divide or multiply accordingly. This works even better if you know whether your party consists of small eaters, diners who’ll bankrupt a buffet restaurant, or a mix of both.

When eating out, it’s increasingly common for dining establishments to have different portion sizes for menu items or explicitly list down the size of a dish. Alternatively, you could ask the wait staff how many people the menu item you’re looking at could feed. If you do end up over-ordering, simply ask if you could have the leftovers to go.

Like the first method, using portion sizes as a guide prevents you from wasting food while saving you some money along the way. It prevents you from overeating as well. It’s never nice to feel sluggish and bloated after a meal, no matter how you (metaphorically) slice it.


#3 Know your expiry dates



This is especially important if you live in a large household that cooks frequently. Although the risk of cooked food waste is lower as leftovers can always be refrigerated or frozen, it’s a different ball game altogether for the ingredients themselves. It’s hard to put items like milk, eggs, and bread to good use after they expire.

To combat this, you need to keep track of the items in your refrigerator and pantry. Know what can be kept for longer periods of time and try to utilise items with a short expiry date as soon as possible. You can also purchase smaller quantities of items with a shorter expiry date more frequently so you avoid this problem entirely.

You might think that buying in bulk saves you a lot of time and effort, but it creates a huge food waste headache later on. This is true for larger households because there needs to be more food at any given time. Use that time and effort to track the expiry dates and make smaller purchases instead. Your wallet will thank you too.


#4 Reuse bones, peels, and other scraps



If you’re a fan of soups and stews, this is a no-brainer. Whether they’re beef, pork, or chicken bones, they’ll do nicely to create a sumptuous stock. You’re making the most out of your money as well, turning one ingredient into multiple dishes, or meals even. Ditto for vegetable scraps and peels, which can turn into wonderful stocks too.

By creating your own stocks, you can control what goes into them. Usually, it’s just water and a bit of fat (olive oil or butter will do nicely). This beats artificial stock cubes or packets with a much longer ingredient list any day of the week.
And like all the other methods listed, you get to save some money as well when you make your own soup stock instead of purchasing premade ones. Your dining companions will thank you too.


#5 Compost



Unfortunately, not all food waste can be avoided. For example, there’s no way to transform an egg shell into something edible. You can’t eat it as it is or make a stock out of it. However, unavoidable food waste can be repurposed as a component for compost. If you have green thumbs or aspire to have a more aesthetic home, this is the perfect solution.

In fact, food waste such as egg shells, coffee grounds, and nut shells are the perfect ingredients for compost. The other two components are simply water and ‘brown’ ingredients like dead leaves or branches. When created and added to soil, compost helps plants grow better, just like fertilisers would.

If you’re already growing plants and vegetables at home, making your own compost can reduce the amount of money allocated for chemical fertilisers. However, do note that there are items that cannot be used for composting. These include meat, oils, and dairy products.
In closing
Singapore is facing a serious food waste problem, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any solutions in sight. On a personal level, there’s much that can be done to stamp out this issue. It doesn’t take a lot of effort either, just some conscientiousness and creative thinking. At a national level, there are schemes being implemented as well.

And you’ve probably noticed by now, but keeping food waste down helps to improve your finances too, even if it’s just a few dollars every week. No one likes the sight of a cluttered refrigerator and pantry either, so you get a peace of mind too. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too? But make sure it’s of an appropriate size to avoid food waste!

Looking to be even more eco-friendly when it comes to dining? Check out MamaShop’s wide range of sustainable dinnerware here!