The swap is this: instead of writing the shopping list and then opening the fridge, you open the fridge first, and you give the food that needs eating soon a shelf of its own. OzHarvest makes a roll of paper tape for exactly this, called Use It Up Tape, and you use it to mark that shelf in the fridge, the freezer or the pantry. Anything on its way out goes there, in plain sight, and gets cooked first. You can stick a piece on a container too, so last night's dinner announces itself instead of hiding at the back. In a trial of Australian households, that one small change cut food waste by 40 per cent. The tape is paper, so it goes in the recycling. OzHarvest's zero waste chefs have also put together free recipes built around exactly the things that tend to get lost: wilting greens, floppy carrots, yesterday's leftovers.
The reason it works is that almost nothing gets thrown out on purpose. Food goes in the bin because it went out of sight, and the five things Australians lose most often are vegetables, leftovers, bakery items, dairy and meat, which is to say the ingredients of dinner. Across a year a household can let up to 1,500 dollars of food slip away like that, which is a cheering thought once you turn it around, because it means the money is already in the fridge. There is a lovely thread in the Australian research too. The households already doing this best are simply the ones with the most practice, and not through any special effort: they kept hold of habits that work. Look in the fridge before writing the list. Cook what needs cooking first. Treat half a bunch of something as the beginning of a meal. Those are the most passed on skills there are, learned standing next to somebody at a bench, and any kitchen can pick them up in a week. OzHarvest now hands the same toolkit to local councils, so the shelf idea can spread street by street. It is a roll of tape and a bit of noticing, and it turns out that is most of it.
Our short take: the tape, the recipes and the figures come from OzHarvest, from its Half Eaten: Household Food Waste Report 2025 and its Use It Up programme. Photograph: Unsplash.