Food Waste

Canadians are throwing out more food than they realize – food that they spent money on and could have eaten!

Inevitably, some food waste is unavoidable – this is the food that can’t generally be sold or eaten, such as bones, some vegetable peelings, egg shells, tea bags, and coffee grounds.

Avoidable food waste is the edible food that ends up in the composter, green cone or garbage. Unfortunately, we often waste good food because we might buy too much, cook too much, forget about it or don’t store it correctly.

In 2022, the National Zero Waste Council researched household food waste in Canada, and the results were astonishing:

• 63% of the food Canadians throw away food that could have been eaten.
• For the average Canadian household 140 kilograms of food is wasted per year – which costs more than $1,300 per year!
• For Canada as a whole, that amounts to almost 2.3 million tonnes of edible food wasted each year, costing Canadians in excess of $20 billion!

All types of food are wasted, but in Canada the most prominently wasted foods by weight are:

• Vegetables: 30%
• Fruit: 15%
• Leftovers: 13%
• Bread and Bakery: 9%
• Dairy and Eggs: 7%

To put that in perspective, every day in Canada we waste:

• 130,000 heads of lettuce
• 1,300,000 tomatoes
• 2,600,000 potatoes
• 650,000 loaves of bread
• 1,300,000 apples
• 640,000 bananas
• 1,000,000 cups of milk
• and 470,000 eggs

Love Food Hate Waste is a great website for information, recipes, and tips to reduce food waste. 

Quick Tips To Reduce Food Waste

Below are some quick tips to "Grow Green With Us" and keep valuable resources out of the garbage:

1. Consider the BUD Rule to waste less which will save you money! Buy what you need, Use what you buy, Drop off the rest responsibly at an EWSWA Depot for recycling!
2. Keep valuable resources such as: metals, tires, electronics, hazardous and special waste, yard waste, etc out of the garbage stream (and Essex-Windsor Regional Landfill!) and into recycling programs by using the free drop off at the Kingsville and Windsor EWSWA Depots. 
3. There are other ways to keep food waste out of the garbage if you are not in the 2025 Green Bin Program: FoodCycler, Backyard Composting, and Green Cone Digesting. 
4. Take advantage of the Residential Curbside Collection programs in your municipality for: Yard Waste, Blue Box, White Goods and keep valuable resources out of the Regional Landfill.