Have you ever opened your fridge and felt a wave of anxiety?
Perhaps you’ve struggled to find something to eat amidst a pile of jams, pickles, dairy products and half-empty condiment packets. Or you may have felt dazed by so many leftover meals wrapped in aluminum foil, not knowing which one to eat first.
Perhaps you’ve even found a long-forgotten jar with contents so spoiled that you just threw it all in the garbage can at once.
If any of these situations sound familiar, you’re not alone.
“ Food often spoils, causing waste, because you forget it in the fridge and find it spoiled later,” according to waste management researcher Kohei Watanabe, from Tokyo’s Teikyo University in Japan.
Domestic food waste is a global problem of alarming proportions. In the UK, around 60% of all food waste occurs in households. In the United States, this percentage is between 40 and 50%.
In Japan, the statistics are similar. In 2021, around 47% of the 5.2 million tons of food wasted in the country came from private kitchens.
There are many reasons for this enormous amount of household waste. But there are some common culprits in all places and in the most diverse cultures.
Some of these are the “loss” of food in the fridge; misinterpretation of the meaning of food dates; impulse buying and lack of planning when shopping in the supermarket; and a general lack of awareness about the need to reduce food waste.
Virtually all countries are aware of these problems and many of them are trying to solve them. But in Japan, the pressure to find solutions is much greater.
The country imports around two thirds of its food. And this factor multiplies the economic and environmental costs of food waste.
“Japan is a country that is not self-sufficient in its food supply,” confirms waste management researcher Tomoko Okayama, from Taisho University in Tokyo. “Importing more food than we need and throwing much of it away is not a good idea.”
Okayama and Watanabe are two of Japan’s leading food waste researchers. They study the causes that lead to edible products ending up in the garbage can and try to use their findings to create interventions based on scientific evidence.
Their latest project applies fridge tidying techniques to combat one of the main causes of waste: the dreaded cluttered fridge.
“If we can help people manage their fridge, we can make sure they don’t forget there’s food in it,” says Okayama.
From the fridge to the garbage can
In 2018, Okayama conducted a survey among more than 500 Tokyo residents. The intention was to study why they discard food.
Predictably, the participants often believed that fresh produce had spoiled or that processed food no longer tasted good. And sometimes they had simply been forgotten.
But the research identified a serious source of confusion that also causes waste: many people threw food away on the “best before” date.
Expiry dates and “best before” dates are not the same thing. And neither necessarily means that the product can no longer be consumed – especially in the case of fermented foods, according to Watanabe.
“Food does spoil at some point and it won’t be safe to eat,” he explains. “So we need to make sure we consume it before that happens. But some products, like fermented foods, take on a better flavor with maturity.”
In Japan and many other countries, the expression “best consumed by” indicates the date by which the product is at its peak flavor. The expiry date indicates the period in which the manufacturer guarantees the safe consumption of the product.
But consumers all over the world often confuse the two dates. And even if a food is past its expiration date, Watanabe points out that manufacturers are conservative in their estimates.
Instead of simply throwing food away just because it has reached the “best before” date indicated on the label, he suggests that people literally use their senses for certain low-risk products, such as condiments, fresh produce, baked goods and fermented products like yogurt and cheese.
“Smell it, look at it,” the researcher advises. “Most food stays good [for consumption] for quite a long time after its expiry date.”
The importance of observation
Okayama and Watanabe realized that a multidisciplinary strategy of community education and practical fridge storage techniques could help reduce waste.
They found government partners willing to test their technique in the Arakawa region, north of Tokyo. The area had already been investing in reducing food waste.
Since 2008, Arakawa’s Department of Cleanliness and Environment had been promoting a project called “Operation Arakawa Mottainai” – a common expression in Japan indicating regret for waste.
They had tried various behavior change strategies over the years, but had difficulty evaluating their effectiveness, according to the department’s head, Yukiko Miyazaki.
The team settled on two apartment complexes in Arakawa, one for the experimental intervention and the other as a control.
Initially, Watanabe and Okayama spent several days examining about a ton of garbage from the apartments. They sorted, weighed and recorded all the food thrown away.
The researchers found food scraps mixed in with whole fruit and vegetables, unopened packets of noodles, bread, snacks, meat, sauces, tofu, fish, drinks and rice cakes.
Beautiful boxes of untouched or almost whole cookies, chocolates and other sweets were another common type of product. They indicated, according to Okayama, that they had been “received as a gift, but nobody wanted them”.
The team also took special note of the large amount of fermented foods found in the garbage, especially yogurt. For Watanabe, this shows a lack of knowledge about product deterioration.
“Fermented foods are still alive, so they don’t spoil so easily,” he explains.
Okayama and Watanabe then held voluntary meetings with residents in an apartment complex called Sky Heights, to talk about the project.
They gave a short talk about food waste, talked about the best consumption dates and presented a set of initial interventions – methods designed to subtly guide people to make positive behavioral choices, without major commitments.
The guidelines included smart fridge organization techniques that anyone can try to reduce waste.
How to organize the fridge
For first-time residents, Watanabe and Okayama provided a bright ribbon with red and white stripes. This would serve to highlight a section of the fridge reserved for food with an upcoming expiration date, or to directly mark products that need to be consumed quickly, in order to draw attention to them.
They also distributed transparent plastic trays without lids, to make food that will soon spoil more visible and easily accessible.
The researchers also provided stickers illustrating two people with their hands together, with the following message: “I can’t eat you. I apologize.”
They encouraged the participants to put one of these stickers on each food product they were going to throw away, taking a moment to internalize that message. Okayama believes that “observation is very important”.
Two weeks after the meeting with the Sky Heights residents, the researchers carried out another waste selection analysis. The results were encouraging.
They found a 10% reduction in food waste in the experimental area and a 10% increase in the control area. Combining the findings, Watanabe interprets that the intervention actually brought about a 20% reduction in food waste.
The researchers suspect that the increase in the control area can be explained, in part, because the study was carried out in December, the month of the hot pot in Japan – a dish that almost inevitably generates waste.
In follow-up surveys with Sky Heights residents, 77% of them said they used the plastic tray, 18% used the stickers and 13% used the tape.
But the simple talk about food waste, bringing the issue to the forefront of people’s minds, also seems to have been a significant factor in the change.
In March, Watanabe and Okayama presented their results to the 14 residents of Sky Heights. During the meeting, one resident – 78-year-old Noriko Nozaki – declared that the campaign had made her aware of “things you don’t normally think about”.
She ended up using her plastic tray to store beer cans rather than food that was about to expire. But Nozaki says she can now relate food waste in her kitchen to major global problems such as climate change and resource scarcity.
“Just having something small in your mind can have a big effect on reducing waste,” she says.
Hiroko Sasaki is 82 years old. Her post-war upbringing brought with it a lifelong commitment never to waste food.
She says she was “very angry” when she saw the photos of all the food products found by Watanabe and Okayama in the garbage at the apartment complex.
“But just being angry won’t solve the problem,” she said. “So it’s good to talk about it and encourage others to do more.”
The spirit of Mottainai – regret for waste
Watanabe and Okayama can’t say to what extent their findings in Arakawa can be applied elsewhere in Japan and abroad.
But they are conducting a new experiment, replicating the study in 520 households in Nagai City, Yamagata Prefecture. This study could encourage local governments in Japan to test similar programs in their communities.
“The cost is not great,” says Watanabe. “If local authorities like the idea, they can scale it up quite easily.”
Miyazaki and his colleagues are already thinking of ways to reach more Arakawa residents, such as information campaigns and teaching children about food waste.
“Our challenge is how to get more households to put the initial measures into practice,” she explains. “We’d like to help encourage the spirit of mottainai.”
But people don’t have to wait for government officials to take the initiative. Anyone can use plastic trays, ribbons and stickers, anywhere in the world.
They can also question when food should really be discarded, according to Okayama.
“Throwing food away just because it’s past its best-by date is a waste of resources – and also of your money.”
How to reduce waste in the fridge
- Create a shelf or section for food that will expire soon, or use tape/stickers to mark it.
- – Leave these foods visible in a transparent container or tray, without pushing them back.
- – Check the “best before” dates, which are different from the expiry date, and whether the product can still be consumed after these dates.
- – If you have to dispose of food, do so conscientiously. Researchers have even advised stickers with a message apologizing to the food for not having been consumed.
