Summer brings barbecues, vacations, and bustling farmers’ markets. What often goes unnoticed: it’s precisely in the warm months that especially large amounts of food end up in the trash in German households. The reasons are surprisingly everyday ones – and with a bit of awareness, they’re easy to avoid.
Before we turn to the special features of summer, it’s worth taking a look at the bigger picture. According to a report by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMLEH), around 10.8 million tons of food were thrown away in Germany in 2022.
The frightening thing is: Almost 58 percent of this waste is generated in private households – that’s about 79 kilograms per person per year. Not in restaurants, not in supermarkets. In our own homes.
The initiative Too Good for the Bin sums it up like this: The biggest leverage lies in the everyday lives of consumers – and with it the greatest opportunity to make a difference.
The most important factor is simple: heat makes food spoil faster. According to R+V Versicherung the number of bacteria doubles at summer temperatures in just 20 minutes. Individual foods can therefore spoil on the way home from the supermarket – for example, if they are transported in a heated car.
The German Nutrition Society (DGE) explicitly warns: Perishable foods such as meat, fish, dairy products and egg dishes are particularly sensitive to high temperatures. Anyone who breaks the cold chain in summer risks not only food waste, but in the worst case also food poisoning.
Particularly perishable in summer:
In winter, most purchases are planned. In summer, markets tempt us with fresh strawberries, grill stands with spontaneous ingredients, and we shop more generously than usual. The problem: what looks tempting at the market often ends up forgotten in the vegetable drawer the next day – and spoils twice as fast as in winter.
Barbecue season is a special chapter in the story of food waste. You shop for ten people, but only seven show up. You plan generously because you want the evening to be spontaneous. The result: meat, grilled vegetables and salads that nobody wants anymore – and that are forgotten in the fridge even faster than in winter.
One of the most common—and most avoidable—summer scenarios: you leave for vacation without checking the fridge first. Arugula from last week, yogurt just about to expire, cheese that really should have been used up long ago. Two weeks later you come back and throw everything out at once.
The simplest and most effective step. If you know what you still have, you shop more deliberately and avoid buying duplicates. With an app like Smantry, a quick look before shopping is enough – all your supplies, fridge contents, and expiry dates at a glance.
Always put frozen goods and fresh meat into the shopping cart last. In hot weather, take a cooler bag with you. Take your groceries straight home and put them in the refrigerator immediately.Consumer Advice Center NRWalso recommends buying smaller quantities but shopping more often on hot days.
Three to four days before departure, it’s worth checking the fridge: What is going to expire soon? What can still be used up or frozen? What can you give to a neighbor? Once you do this consciously, you’ll be surprised how much can be saved – and you’ll leave with a clear conscience.
It’s better to plan conservatively and add more if needed. Leftover grilled vegetables can be turned into great salads, wraps or soups – but only if you still know what’s in the fridge and when it should be used up.
Some foods can exceptionally be stored in the fridge during summer, even though they are usually better kept at room temperature:
Keep track of supplies, groceries and durable products before small price increases turn into unnecessary extra costs.
Or try it right in your browser — no install neededFood waste rarely happens out of indifference. It happens because of a lack of oversight. We don’t know what we have. We buy things twice. We forget what’s at the back of the fridge.
So the first step isn’t a new recipe or a new habit – it’s getting an overview. Anyone who knows what they have and when it needs to be used up will automatically make better decisions.
The Smantry app was developed precisely for this problem: as a digital memory that supports you in everyday life – with no effort, no need to change your habits, and no guilty conscience.
79 kilograms of food per person per year – that sounds like a structural problem that individuals can hardly influence. But especially in summer it becomes clear: many of these losses occur in very specific moments. When buying too much for a barbecue. When going on holiday without checking the fridge. When forgetting the yogurt behind the juice bottle.
Small changes in behavior therefore have a particularly direct impact in summer. And if you use a digital memory to help, you don’t even have to remember very much yourself.
Smantry App – throw away less, keep more. Download the app for free | All blog articles
The recent Berlin power outage reminded many people: emergency preparedness isn't prepper folklore but everyday common sense. Germany's civil protection office recommends households keep a ten-day stock. Sounds like a lot – it isn't, if you approach it right.
Important: the numbers are guidance, not dogma. A stock made of things you genuinely like gets maintained – one made of dusty specialty cans gets forgotten.
The smartest emergency stock is a "living stock": buy a little more of what you use anyway, always eat the oldest first, and restock. Nothing expires and nothing costs extra. Our guide which foods to stockpile shows what works best.
A checklist on the fridge is outdated from day one. In Smantry you instead define minimum stock levels for your emergency items: the app shows how many days you are covered, warns about expiring items and automatically puts missing things on the shopping list. The preparation statistics give you the full picture.
You don't have to buy a 10-day stock this weekend. Add three extra items to your next shop, record them in the app, and repeat for a few weeks. Preparedness is a subscription, not a sprint.
The internet is full of before-and-after photos of perfectly sorted pantries. What you don't see: what they look like eight weeks later. Order that lasts isn't created on one big cleaning Saturday but by a system that works with your routine – three building blocks of 5 minutes each.
Not the whole pantry – just one zone. This week the pasta shelf, next week the cans. Expired items out, opened items to the front, quickly update the stock in the app. After a few weeks everything has been covered once, without it ever feeling like a project. The idea behind it is explained in our article on the 5S method.
The use-it-up zone is the game changer: it turns "there's something in the back somewhere" into a visible cooking assignment. Our leftover recipes supply the ideas.
New to the back, old to the front – sounds trivial, but fails without an overview of expiry dates. That's where digital tracking helps: Smantry sorts your items by best-before date and reminds you in time. Our guide shows how to model storage locations, shelves and compartments in the app.
Organizing systems fail at the entry barrier, not at willpower. Three small weekly habits beat any mega cleaning day – because they happen on the side, before chaos even builds up. Start with a single zone. Today.
In August, gardens and markets overflow – and in January a tomato costs three times as much again. Canning closes exactly that gap. You don't need grandma's canning machine or a cellar shelf: a big pot, clean jars and one afternoon are enough to get started.
1. Sterilise jars and lids in boiling water for 10 minutes. 2. Fill hot, prepared food (tomato sauce, chutney, compote) to 1–2 cm below the rim. 3. Wipe the rims clean and close firmly. 4. Place the jars in a water bath and process for 30–90 minutes at 90–100 °C depending on the recipe. 5. Let them cool – the lid must curve inwards. If it doesn't, refrigerate and use up soon.
Pickled and sugar-rich preserves usually keep 6–12 months stored cool and dark. What matters most is checking: inspect the lid, look, smell – and when in doubt, throw it out.
Home-canned jars have no barcode – with Smantry you can print your own barcodes and record every jar with its use-by date. The app reminds you before the winter stew quietly expires on the shelf. Our article on storing autumn treasures shows the best storage spots.
Since version 1.39, two updates have been released, and together they shift the app’s focus. Until now, it was mainly about recording and keeping track of individual items. From now on, it’s about your inventory as a whole: With the new inventory mode, you can update an entire stockroom in just a few minutes, minimum stock levels tell you what’s missing rather than just what’s there, and the interface has been redesigned in the places you tap most often.
The most common reason why inventory in an app eventually becomes inaccurate is simple: over time, a gap develops between what is listed and what is actually on the shelf. Until now, your only option was to correct items one by one. Now there is a dedicated mode for that.
The inventory mode doesn't start with your entire stock, but with the question of where you are right now. You select a storage location—“pantry,” “freezer,” or “cellar”—and Smantry shows you only the items stored there. The on-screen prompt says it plainly: _“Start taking inventory right in front of the storage location.”_ That's exactly how it's meant to work—phone in hand, cupboard door open.
The counting flow itself is deliberately kept simple so that it runs quickly:
Two details that make the difference between a counting aid and an honest supply:
Which unit do you mean? If a product with multiple expiration dates is stored in the storage location, Smantry does not guess. When you remove a unit, it asks: _“Which unit are you removing?”_—and indicates which one you should use first. When you add one, it instead asks for the new unit’s date, which you can either copy from the existing stock or enter manually.
Why is it being removed? When you reduce a quantity, Smantry asks why: _“Did you use it up, or did you have to throw it away?”_ This ensures that anything removed during an inventory count is included in your waste figures—instead of being hidden in a silent adjustment entry.
An inventory count is only worthwhile if it ultimately leads to action. That’s why the process doesn’t end with “saved,” but with a summary: how many items you checked at this storage location, how many stock levels were adjusted, and how many items were removed—broken down into used up and discarded.
And then comes the part that saves you work: Smantry lists everything that has fallen below your minimum stock level during inventory directly underneath—with a button labeled "Add to shopping list". From the shelf to the shopping list, with no extra steps.
For this to work, Smantry needs to know what counts as “enough.” You define that in the minimum stock levels—not laboriously for each individual item, but by category: two kilos of flour, six liters of milk, ten packs of pasta. The screen continuously shows you how many categories are active and what is still needed to reach the minimum levels.
New in the inventory list is the handy filter: “below minimum stock”. With a single tap, it turns the inventory list into a list of missing items—the view you actually want before going shopping. (A frequently requested suggestion from the feedback portal)
And if you're starting from scratch, you don't have to come up with the numbers yourself: Use "Load template" to import a ready-made set of minimum stock levels. The quantities are then scaled to the number of people and the desired period—you say "3 people, 10 days," and Smantry does the math.
The most important of these templates is the emergency supplies table from the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK). It is now available as a template in Smantry, using the published table as its source—so it contains the quantities actually listed there, rather than estimates. The source is identified in the template dialog, and a preview shows you what will be imported before you apply it.
This is accompanied by a small but important correction to the preparedness indicator: An item can now be marked as "Do not count toward emergency supplies"—intended for anything that may be on the shelf but won't keep anyone fed in an emergency. Wine and sweets are listed as examples directly in the setting description. This simply makes the statement "Prepared for 12 days" more accurate.
At the same time, we’ve refined the interface in the areas where most of the action happens. Not as a redesign for redesign’s sake—the list of changes may sound unremarkable, and that’s exactly the point:
The cleanup list introduced in version 1.39 has gained the step it was missing. When you remove an item from it, Smantry no longer asks why in a text dialog, but instead displays two illustrated cards: used up or thrown away. You can grasp the difference in half a second instead of having to read it.
The fact that the loading spinner appears on the card you tapped may sound like a minor detail—but it makes the difference between “I know what’s happening” and “I’ll tap again.”
We’ve made adjustments to the new durability screen introduced in 1.39 based on the feedback we received:
Sign-in now takes place on a dedicated, secure sign-in page (`identity.smantry.com`) – and best of all, it opens with a single tap and already knows whether you wanted to sign in or register. Cases that previously resulted in two accounts being created because an email address was already linked to a different sign-in method now prompt you for confirmation instead of displaying an error.
By the way: New accounts are now set up in your language. Previously, welcome content and emails could appear in English without warning, even though the app was running in German.
A large part of the work in these two versions is invisible in a private household, because it is meant for businesses: households can now belong to a company, with roles, seat-based billing and a log of every stock change. In the app you only see what concerns you — the note “This account is managed by your company”, for instance — and the option to issue material to people and take it back, right on the phone.
If you use Smantry professionally, write to us and we will show you.
Smantry 1.42 is available on the App Store and on Google Play. One tap on “Update” is all it takes — then give the new inventory mode ten minutes. One storage location is enough to see the point.
Do you have feedback on the new features, or an idea for the next version? Tell us directly in the app via the support chat or in the feedback portal. The “below minimum stock” filter, the one-tap calendar and the month-only mode all started there.
