Reducing your Food & Gardening Waste
- Dylan Tingey
- Apr 9
- 4 min read
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, around 30% to 40% of food becomes waste every year in America. Ten years ago, this meant 133 billion pounds of food waste were produced per year — translating to $161 billion in losses (USDA). Food waste is the single greatest category of waste sent to landfills every year and represents losses not only in food that could have fed people, but also in the water, energy, and labor that was used to produce it in the first place. Per the Environmental Protection Agency, only 4% of the 63 million tons of food waste produced in 2018 was reused through composting (EPA). In 2025, Americans will discard around 60 million tons of food, most of which will make its way to landfills.
However, much of what becomes food waste could be repurposed through other means, easily accessible to many consumers. One of the easiest places to start is composting food scraps or anything that has gone bad. Most local municipalities in this area have industrial composting facilities, which will even take recyclables like soiled paper towels and pizza boxes that could not otherwise be recycled. The city compost is also a great place to put meat products (including leftovers, scraps, and fish) instead of your own compost, because it may attract animals. Campbell, Saratoga, and Los Gatos are all serviced by West Valley Recycles, which has options for organics bins which are taken to their composting facilities, the same way they haul away trash and recyclables hassle-free. Full lists of everything that may be placed in city bins can be found on the West Valley Recycles website (Westvalleyrecycles.com).
If you garden at all, composting at home is one of the best ways to keep your plants healthy. All gardeners have their ideas for what should go in compost, but food scraps from your kitchen are a great place to start. Composting can be done either in a contained compost bin or a pile in your garden. To begin your own composting process, build up a 4 to 6-inch layer of twigs, leaves, or wood chips on the bottom. Then, stack layers of kitchen scraps (fruits, vegetables, crushed eggshells, coffee grounds, paper coffee filters, etc.) and sticks or leaves repeatedly, ensuring a 1:3 ratio of fresh food scraps to dried garden waste. To maintain a healthy compost pile, you should keep the compost damp by occasionally watering and aerated by “turning” the compost pile. Once the compost is fully broken down, it can be added to existing plants and seedlings to provide vital nutrients and compounds needed for healthy produce and strong growth. However, you don’t even need to compost your kitchen scraps before you can use them in your garden. You can place small bits of vegetables, fruits, crushed eggshells, and even coffee grounds (as long as your plants thrive in acidic conditions) directly into the soil or under a sapling before you transplant it.
Even if you don’t garden, there are many other uses for kitchen food scraps. One of my favorite ways to reuse vegetable scraps like carrot tops, onion skins, and other little bits is to put them in a freezer bag and then flavor a homemade vegetable or chicken stock with them. The vegetables add a nice depth to any broth, and you don’t have to use perfectly nice food you might have eaten. Another great use for certain vegetable cuttings is growing new plants. The easiest plant for this is green onions, where all you need to do is place the cut-off white end with the roots in a small pot of soil or water on your counter. Water occasionally and make sure they get some sunlight, and you will have more green onions in a few weeks! You can even use the same root heads a few times before you will need to get more. Another use for certain plant skins is making natural plant dyes. Exact methods for extracting the dyes vary, as do color and intensity between batches — making every piece more unique. Many common fruits and vegetables make wonderfully bright and unexpected colors when they are processed. For example, avocado pits and skins make a pinkish peach color; red cabbage can make hues ranging from blue to purple depending on pH; onion skins, turmeric, and carrots, all yield shades of yellowish-orange. Coffee grounds can even be used to make rich shades of dark brown (Pioneer Thinking). For processing, begin by chopping the scraps small and boiling them in twice the amount of water as plant material for about an hour. To actually begin dying fabrics or yarn with your dye is more complicated, but many crafting websites online, including Pioneer Thinking, have very detailed descriptions of the entire dying process.
Food is wasted at all stages of production, whether because of cosmetic defects, oversupply, or consumers misunderstanding labeling about expiration, best-by, and sell-by dates. This waste represents not only food that likely could have still fed someone, but also lost energy, water, and other resources used to grow or process it in the first place. Being more conscious of our individual consumption and putting effort into reusing maximizes our purchases, and reduces pressure on the planet.
