25 simple tips for cutting down food waste

Six tall stacks of food storage containers, together with their lids, that we tested.

Photo: Michael Murtaugh

You’ve probably encountered some suspicious life-form in the fridge now and again. Into the compost or landfill the specimen goes, and with it your $2.99 per pound.

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It doesn’t matter if you’re a fervid home cook or a takeout devotee: Throwing less food away is better for the environment, better for the spirit, and can help you save big on money and time.

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Strategies to waste less food→

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“I saved 2,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill with this simple composter.”

A compost bin outside in a bed of clover.

Photo: Rose Maura Lorre

For environmentalists who want to reduce their household waste without assigning themselves more chores, senior staff writer Rose Maura Lorre swears by this backyard composter. It requires next-to-zero human effort—just install it on a patch of unpaved ground and feed it some of your scraps.

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A personal trash incinerator fueled by Mother Nature→

Our advice for shopping secondhand

Find a good used laptop or desktop PC

You can save a few hundred dollars by getting a used computer that can do most of the same stuff a new one can.

A wooden round table with two chairs, in a home setting.

Expert tips for getting secondhand furniture

Buying used and vintage furniture requires patience and savvy. Here’s how to find your next great treasure.

Two KitchenAid stand mixers of different models, side by side on a counter.

How to score fancy kitchen gear on the cheap

If you know where to look, you can find secondhand versions of expensive kitchen gear for a fraction of the price.

Purging your closet? Here’s how to responsibly donate your old clothes.

An illustration with a person doing 4 different actions, representing different ways to responsibly get rid of old clothes.

Illustration: Sabrena Khadija

If post-closet clean-out, you have piles of old clothes and shoes languishing in your home (or lurking in your car’s trunk from who-knows-when), you will eventually have to decide what to do with those castoffs.

Our advice for donating, recycling, or reusing clothes responsibly→

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25 simple tips for cutting down food waste

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