Use Food Well

Food Waste in Kitsap: Why It Matters

Kitsap households throw away 11.3 million pounds of food each year—much of it food that could have been eaten. An estimated 30–40% of discarded food was still edible. That’s up to 3.8 million meals—and money—going to waste. Wasted food also means wasted grocery dollars, ($1,800–$2,900 per household) as well as time, transportation, and resources.

So let’s see if we can help you find a better way to save! 

We will explore benefits of sanitation, storage, and planning.

2026 Webinar Schedule

We are thrilled to offer a variety of webinars this year featuring leaders in food waste prevention, recovery, and composting across multiple sectors.

Visit https://foodwastepreventionweek.com/webinars/ to view schedule and registration. Check out the descriptions below the schedule to learn more about each webinar.

Food Safety: From Store to Table

Wash hands and surfaces often

We all know how important it is to wash hands after visiting the bathroom. You should be just as diligent about keeping clean in the kitchen! Bacteria can easily spread between your hands, cutting boards, utensils, counter tops and food.

Follow these steps to clean while you cook and prevent food poisoning:

• Wash your hands with warm water and soap for at least 20 seconds before and after handling food, and also after using the bathroom, changing diapers, and handling pets.
• Wash your cutting boards, dishes, silverware, and counters with hot soapy water after preparing each food.
• Cloth towels can trap bacteria, so wash them often in the hot cycle of your washing machine. Or better yet, use disposable paper towels to clean up in the kitchen.
• Rinse fresh fruits and vegetables under running tap water, including those like carrots or squash with skins that you’ll remove.
• Rub firm-skinned fruits and vegetables like potatoes under running tap water or scrub with a clean vegetable brush while rinsing.

Separate: Don’t cross-contaminate

“Cross-contamination” means different foods coming into contact, which lets bacteria move between them. It’s an easy way for bacteria to spread throughout your kitchen, which puts your family at risk of food poisoning. But cross-contamination is easy to avoid by being careful with how you handle your ingredients, especially raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs.

Follow these steps to avoid cross-contamination while you cook:

• Separate raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs from other foods in your grocery cart, in shopping bags, and in your refrigerator.
• Use one cutting board for fresh produce and a separate one for raw meat, poultry and seafood.
• Never put cooked food on a plate that has touched raw meat, poultry, seafood or eggs.

Cook: Heat your food to a safe temperature

For bacteria, heat is deadly—and what’s bad for harmful bacteria is good for you! Always cook your food to a hot enough internal temperature to kill the bacteria that cause foodborne illness.

The safe temperature depends on what you’re cooking. Use our safe cooking temperatures chart to find the right temperature for your dish.

Other tips for safely cooking or heating your food:

• Use a food thermometer to quickly and easily check the internal temperature of cooked foods.
• Check the internal temperature in the thickest parts of meat and poultry, e.g. the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast for chicken.
• Remember, color is not a reliable indicator of doneness in meat! A food thermometer is the safe, reliable way to check that your food is cooked thoroughly.
• Cook eggs until the yolk and white are firm, not runny. Avoid recipes in which eggs stay raw or only get partially cooked.
• When cooking in a microwave oven, make sure there are no cold spots in food (where bacteria can survive). For best results, cover your food, stir, and rotate it (on a turntable or a couple times by hand) for thorough cooking.
• Bring sauces, soups and gravy to a boil when you reheat them. Heat other leftovers thoroughly to 165 °F to kill harmful bacteria.

Chill: Refrigerate promptly

Cold temperatures below 40 °F slow the growth of harmful bacteria. That’s why it’s best to refrigerate food right away after shopping or eating. Don’t over-stuff your refrigerator, because cold air needs to be able to circulate.

Keeping your refrigerator at a temperature of 40 °F or below, and your freezer at 0 °F or below, is one of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of food poisoning. You can use an appliance thermometer to check that the temperature is right.

• Refrigerate or freeze meat, poultry, eggs and other perishables as soon as you get them home from the store.
• Never let raw meat, poultry, eggs, cooked food or cut fresh fruits or vegetables sit at room temperature for more than two hours (or one hour at above 90 °F). If you’re not cooking it promptly, put it in the fridge or freezer.
• Never thaw food at room temperature. There are three safe ways to thaw food:
  1. in the refrigerator,
  2. in cold water, or
  3. in the microwave.
• If you thaw food in cold water or the microwave, be sure to cook it immediately.
• Always marinate food in the refrigerator, never at room temperature.
• Got lots of leftovers? Divide them into multiple shallow containers so they’ll cool more quickly.

Storage: Make Your Food Last Longer

Instead of the Expiration Date Use your Senses Instead 

Your senses can be a great judge of whether food should be eaten. If something smells and tastes good, it often is. Milk and yogurt are products that often outlast the date on the label (with proper storage of course!). So next time you’re looking through the fridge and not sure if you’ve waited too long to dig into a package, be brave and take a sniff before tossing food just based on the mysterious date on your package, which leads to hundreds of dollars of perfectly edible food being tossed. 
Want to dig in deeper? Read the NRDC’s issue brief on date labels. 

Preventing Waste at Home 

Take a major step to prevent your food from going bad by upgrading your food storage skills. Options include separate food storage areas for specific produce that will help the foods store longer, rotation practices for dried goods, and also where things are stored adds to cleanliness, awareness, and planning.

Starting when food comes into the house, where it is stored can extend the life of product such as where it is stored in the refrigerator. Some times when food starts to look funky, you wonder is this ok to Eat or Toss. There are several websites designed to assist with these everyday tasks. Save More Than Food covers food storage, freezing, and reviving your favorite foods to maximize the freshness. NRDC’s comprehensive and interactive food storage guide includes even more tips on how to store everything from beans and oils to seafood and meats. 

Creating specific food storage areas for foods such as “potatoes and onions” which shouldn’t be stored together as they will promote quicker ripening. Store separately. Seattle Public Utility has created a great resource for showing where food should be kept and how it should be seperated to Stay Fresh Longer. These tips and tricks will help you make the most of what you have to save you money and effort. Use the food you brought home with hope, to its best potential.