Funky things are happening with the plumbing down under. While I’m still reeling from the clockwise/counter-clockwise toilet flush hoax, Southern hemisphere inventors have moved on. Two recent creations offer solutions to the inefficiency of washing food down the drain.

First, a 9-year-old New Zealand boy invented a contraption that allows you to dump food waste into a compost bin via your kitchen drain. This allows composting without the minor inconvenience of collecting the food waste in a pail and bringing it to your bin.Now comes word of the removable sink. While the primary purpose of this Australian creation is to conserve water (always a good thing), it helps with food waste, too.

After washing the food off dishes, you can remove the sink to water plants with the runoff. Nutrients from the bits of food in the water will only help nourish the plants. And it shouldn’t attract pests because only really small food particles will fit through the strainer.

Overall, it’s like turning your sink into a rain barrel, only indoors and you control the “rain.”

Life in Lidia’s Italy doesn’t include waste. The public television chef has some helpful advice on avoiding food waste.

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Talking about composting–that’s the spirit, Whole Foods. Now how about making food donation a priority to reduce the need for composting? 

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Belated, happy first birthday wishes to North Berkeley Harvest! In 2008, the California group picked more than 7,000 pounds of backyard fruit that would otherwise have gone for naught and donated it to the needy (including the underrated feijoa).

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Across the Bay, two food-obsessed SF Chronicle writers wrote an interesting wish list for 2009. One wish was for: 

More attention by food producers, restaurateurs, hoteliers and food service organizations to environmental concerns, reducing waste and lowering carbon footprints.  

I think that’s the long forgotten seventh verse of Auld Lang Syne (check out those latter lyrics!).

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Nice to see that the recession-induced glut of milk isn’t leading to waste–yet–because it’s in powder format. Your government is buying the excess and storing it in a California warehouse. I wonder how long it lasts what the expiration dates are like on milk powder and whether they’ll ever use what’s in the warehouse.

Believe it or not, another year is finished (again?). As we celebrate 2009’s beginning, let’s resolve to reduce food waste.

Because I doubt I can communicate my thoughts any better, here’s an op-ed I wrote in 2006.

In addition to recycling ideas from two years ago (recycle, reduce, reuse, right?!), I’m making a few new resolutions for 2009:

• Compost better. I’ve long composted, but not all that well. Up until now, I’ve been content to keep my food waste out of the trash. Now that I have my new Terra composter, I’d like to actually make nutrient-dense soil because I plan to…

• Garden. My new house has a nice backyard with raised beds. It’s time to flex those horticultural muscles.

• Be a good parent and avoid waste without losing my mind. Wish me luck and please feel free to offer tips (there are sure to be more posts on the topic in 2009). I’m guessing it will involve lots of common sense, some portion control and eating some of the boy’s leftovers.

May your new year be sweet and your resolution strong!

Seeds of Change, a US and British seed seller, want you to Dig Your Dinner (and maybe even lunch).

They’ve launched a campaign (with cool graphics) to promote gardening. While you may not join the program (for £20) and receive their seeds, you can heed their message.

In addition to the often-discussed benefits of gardening (eating really local, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the ability to eat organic, propagating endangered varieties), I believe that growing your own food will reduce waste.

If you put in the time to reap and sow your own produce (not to mention setting up your beds, weeding, etc.), you’re less likely to let it go for naught. And while you may have an abundance of crops mid-summer, you’ll learn to cook and can or find neighbors happy to take handouts.

Seeds of Change’s message is a timely reminder, as now is a great time to start planning your garden. And a backyard plot (big or small!) makes a great new year’s resolution. So come on, people–can you dig it? (Couldn’t resist.)

Here’s one more reason not to waste food: spare your garbageman the mess. The few days after Christmas, trash volume increases greatly, in some cases even doubling.

Wrapping, packaging and cardboard make up a large portion of that mess. But just like those materials should be recycled, so should food. This means composting or feeding it to animals (worms, goats, dogs, hogs, etc.).

Actually, the best case scenario would be reducing your excess food and/or reusing the leftovers to avoid throwing out food. In case you still have turkey from Christmas, here are some leftover ideas.

Keeping food out of the waste stream is important because not only does it spare garbage guys the stench and mess, it minimizes landfill methane emissions. And why does that matter? Oh, I don’t know, it’s just that landfills are the largest human-related source of methane (34% of all emissions).

And those emissions contribute to climate change. Coming full circle, keeping food out of your trash, you’ll be doing part of your part to fight global warming.

And it’s high time, because, I don’t know about you, but I find a 60-degree Christmas day quite odd. (Ignore this last bit if you grew up in Florida or California.)

Australian group Do Something received lots of media attention by drawing attention to Christmas food waste. Both television and print media ran stories about how food waste during the holidays harms the environment.

Not surprisingly, the reaction hasn’t been that positive. As you can see here, commenters are frustrated that enviornmentalists are trying to tell them how to celebrate their Christmas. And that’s one of the nicer comments.

I can see both sides here. Christmas, and, ahem, Thanksgiving, are times when the media is prone to pay more attention to the issue of food waste and hunger. If you want to get the message out, it’s a good time to do so.

Then again, it’s kind of a bah-humbug approach to single out the environmental effect of Christmas food waste. And while guilt is an effective motivator, it’s not a great way to go.

My take is that you should use the attention of a holiday to prompt folks to make changes for the rest of the year, which will have such a larger impact and won’t piss people off.

Does that piss you off? What’s your take on the topic?

You tell ‘em, Courtland Milloy:

Check out any restaurant dumpster in downtown Washington or the trash cans along any street on garbage collection day, and you’re likely to find enough wasted food to fill those pantries to overflowing.

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Florida’s CBS 12 wants you to use canned vegetables to avoid waste. I’m with them in spirit, but I just can’t get behind canned veggies.

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Brief Hollywood food waste mention here:

For anyone who has ever been to a film set knows the amount of environmental waste created from a simple production. There are water bottles, generators, air conditioned trailers, wasted food, equipment trucks and the list can go on and on.

Wasted food on the set? I’m shocked.

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In exchange for filling out a survey, Recycle for Cornwall sends area residents a useful book with ideas on how to use up food items. The friendly folks at Recycle Cornwall sent me the Eat Well, Waste Less guide to using up leftovers. It’s a great resource, kind of like The Use It Up Cookbook with more meat pies and brown sauce recipes.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your municipality took such a hands-on approach to reducing food waste? It’s not that hard–even a Web site like this would help. (FYI, they’re not sending any more books to the States.)

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Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and best wishes for 2009!

With Hannukah already here and Christmas just about, it’s worth looking at this grocery shopping psychology study on “cabinet castaways.” The study, an oldie but a goodie, found that 63% of unused products were bought for specific purposes:

When people buy products for specific recipes or specific occasions, they tend to be overly optimistic…After buying the product, people lack the time to prepare the recipe or they overestimate the amount of people at their party; leaving the occasion-specific product unused…

So what can you do? Don’t overestimate your guests. I know, I know–easier said than done, because you are fighting the “good provider” impulse. But here are three ideas:

1. Recognize that it’s not the worst thing in the world to run out of something.
2. Use e-vites or actual paper invitations with RSVPs (now that’s old school!)
3. You can always have reserves on hand, not open the packages and return them if they go unused.

Also, it may be wise to minimize those holiday food impulse buys, like candy cane oatmeal and egg nog pizza.*

* These products may or may not exist…but you get the picture.

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On a separate note: donations to food banks around the country are down and demand is up. If you can, please give what you can–food, money or time.

I occasionally hear from apartment dwellers frustrated that they can’t compost. I point them to this indoor composting contraption or suggest worm bins. But here’s a new idea: Export your compost!

I just found out that New Yorkers can drop off their food waste at Union Square Farmer’s Market, where the Lower East Side Ecology Center will compost it with their in-vessel system. They have a few groundrules–hair and nails (human or animal) are OK, but not so coal or dog poop. Fair enough.

There are a number of public compost spots, like the one in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park. But the farmer’s market drop spot is ideal. If every farmer’s market had a compost collection, it’d complete a virtuous circle: Every week, you buy fresh produce, eat most of it (hopefully) and bring back the scraps, which the farmer uses to make compost to help grow more food.

Bringing your compost bucket to the market would become part of the routine (with a separate container for the fresh food, natch). Does anyone know if this occurs at other farmer’s markets?

This columnist’s pantry check yields waste and a New Year’s resolution. Plus, tales of gangster donations!

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I have only one rule here at Wasted Food: When a Danish dairy producer reduces waste through a process I don’t quite understand, I link to it.

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If you’re not yet sick of me, here’s an interview from Cooking Up A Story. It sure was hot that day in Portland.

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Nice one, Sainsburys (UK). Shrewd move to invest in anaerobic digestion. Of course, the EU pushing things along doesn’t hurt.

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Finally, this post on Grow. Cook. Eat. has a nice spirit to it. I think Mole Cannoli should become a national holiday–kind of like Calvin Trillin’s Thanksgiving.