2 . How much food do you buy each week? Are you someone who stuffs your fridge and cupboards full of foods so that you’ll always have something to eat? Or maybe, you’ re more efficient with your shopping, only buying what you need and using up your leftovers so that you keep food waste to a minimum.

Throwing away unwanted food has become a big issue in the developed world. While some of us throw away unwanted items, people in other parts of world face food shortages and are starving. It’s a shocking fact that a third of the world’s food is wasted each year. The actual figure is 1.3 billion tons of food, which is enough to feed a billion hungry people.

You may think supermarkets are the main contributors to this mountain of food. After all, they do get rid of stuff that’s past its sell-by-date and they often refuse to sell vegetables and fruit that are the wrong shape or look damaged. They’ve also been criticized for encouraging customers to buy more than they need through promotions such as “buy one and get one free”.

But we ourselves are mainly responsible for creating food waste. In Europe an incredible 53% of food waste comes from households, which results in 88 million tonnes of food waste a year. The food waste is buried and left to rot. Unfortunately, this causes greenhouse gases which eventually lead to global warming and climate change.

In Denmark, a woman called Selina Juul has been working hard to solve this problem. She convinced some supermarkets to stop selling their items in bulk (批量) so that people bought only what they needed. She produced a leftovers cookbook and she's set up an education programme in schools. This has helped create a significant 25% reduction in food waste, which shows that something can be done.

Clearly, we need to think twice when we put something in our shopping trolley, and when we’re at home, we should make the most of the food we have—using recipes that use up our leftovers or even sharing our food with our friends and neighbors.