Hello! I’m Saki, Borderless Creations’ Ambassador!
Today I’m writing about “Food Waste”.
”Food Waste” problem in Japan
From: 燃やすごみの組成（平成30年度）京都市食品ロスゼロプロジェクト公式サイト
According to Kyoto’s food loss zero project information, Japan’s “burnable garbage”’s around 40% is food waste. If we could reduce this amount of food waste, that will lead to so much less CO2 emission from burning all the precious food we through away.
Most of Japanese are not familiar with compost and tend to through away food as ”burnable garbage”. However, how about other countries?
Let’s have a look at Korea. In Korea, it has been mandatory to compost food waste since 2013. The percentage of recycling food waste used to be only 2% in 1995, but in 2022, the percentage is 95%, wow.
How about France? From January 2024, composting is now mandatory in France as well. In Paris, worm compost kit is available for free.
Taking a look at World’s garbage recycling and compost ranking, Japan is not in a good place. The reason is said to be because Japan does not recycle food waste.(*1)
From: https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/0ea1e9f87759da0f78d2e8066846d16a6e69a05c
How can we reduce food waste?
Here are my ways.
Reducing Food Waste
・Nukaduke(rice bran pickles)
The easiest and tasty way is to put left over vegetables into nuka(rice bran) and voila! You can eat your leftover vegetables the next day as tasty tukemono. Fermented and nutritious. You can even put water melon’s peel in and it becomes delicious too.
・Freeze
When I buy too much meat/fish, I put it in the freezer.
When I want to eat, put the meat into silicon bag and put the bag inside water. Wait for 30 min and ready to be cooked.
・Miso soup
Tiny pieces of vegetables left? Then put it in Miso soup, so easy and tasty.
Have you ever tried putting cucumber in Miso soup? Goes well with red miso, have it a try!
・Food bank/Food drive
There are food baks and food drives in every local. You can find one in your local too!
・Share/Exchange - Osusowake
When I buy too much food, cook too much, I share that with my sister’s family, colleagues, neighbors.
Share/Exchange and there, a wonderful, lovely communication starts.
If you are worried that your friend might not want it, then ask before you take the food to them! They’ll say no if they don’t want it.
Food waste recycle – Compost
Even if we try so hard to not waste any bit of food, there is food waste.
So for those food, we can recycle. By using the mighty Compost!
There are many kinds in Compost.
Warm compost, drying compost, EM compost, cardboard compost etc.
I chose to use LFC compost which comes with a bag and blended soil for compost and with support(online chat).
The size is not too big, not too small. Fits in a veranda.
In summer, I hated the garbage smell but now, using compost, no smelly garbage in the house nor in veranda.
The happiest moments using compost is the time when I open up the bag and feel the warm breath of soil. When you touch the soil, it is warm just like us human. I feel that the soil/earth is alive and I’m in the cycle of it.
Also, there are surprising moments.
Composting means full of micro-orgasms and nutrition. So, soldier fly(mizuabu) come to lay eggs. This is good for soil, and it speeds up the composting process, but when the flies are adults, they fly away from the bag. I was so surprised by the flies, that I screamed the first time. But eventually I got used to it.
The flies do not stung us humans so it’s safe.
Composting is much easier to start than you think! If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend you do!
How do you reduce your food waste? Leave a comment and let me know♪
*1: https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/0ea1e9f87759da0f78d2e8066846d16a6e69a05c
Reference：https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/1addffe180ab63a920cec939fdc33cb53f03ba22
