Author Archives: Jonathan

Friday Buffet

Boom! Rhode Island’s state legislature proposes a landfill food waste ban and the private sector leaps into action, with news of a planned composting facility near Providence. — — I really enjoyed this Food Hacks piece on regrowing food from the ends and other undesirable parts of herbs and veggies. If I had any use for […]

January 24, 2014 | Posted in Composting, Household, Legislation, Supermarket, Technology | Comments closed

V is for V-Carrot

This past summer I shared several examples of alphabet produce. While I haven’t seen many of those wonderful oddities recently, given the decreased homegrown and farmers’ market produce, I recently came across this beauty on my last market outing: This carrot makes a great ‘V’ and could even double as an ‘A.’ It also makes a […]

January 16, 2014 | Posted in Alphabet Produce, Farmers' Market | Comments closed

2014: The Year of Food Waste Recycling?

We’re just beginning this new year, but talk of diverting food from landfills–be it by composting or anaerobic digestion–abounds. And that’s a very good thing. In Connecticut, January 1st meant the start of a new law requiring some businesses within 20 miles of a composting facility to recycle their food waste. While the specifics still feel […]

January 10, 2014 | Posted in Anaerobic Digestion, Composting, Energy | Comments closed

Keep Your Waste Stream Relatively Clean In 2014

Happy New Year, y’all! As we make a boatload of resolutions for the year ahead, let’s put wasting less food at or near the top of our lists. Providing inspiration, the European Union has made noises about declaring 2014 the “European Year Against Food Waste.” At least the European Parliament urged the European Commission to […]

January 1, 2014 | Posted in Household, Personal | Comments closed

NYComposts!

Yesterday, New York City took a major step toward matching San Francisco and Seattle as exemplars of urban composting. The New York City Council approved a bill requiring large scale commercial operations to separate food from its regular waste stream. The legislation, which requires either composting or anaerobic digestion for large food waste generators within […]

December 20, 2013 | Posted in Composting, Legislation | Comments closed

Visualizing Australian Food Waste

Apparently, infographic month continues here at Wasted Food, this time for Australia. My favorite stat from Foodwise: Australia’s annual food waste would fill enough trash trucks to stretch from Oz to New Zealand three times! (I will refrain from making a lame Outback Steakhouse joke here.)

December 19, 2013 | Posted in General, Infographic, International, Stats | Comments closed

Lovin’ It

When I was first doing the calculations about the volume of food America wasted every day–the stuff that would eventually become the first sentence of my book–I couldn’t imagine that that Rose Bowl image would end up in one of those cool whiteboard animation projects. Well, it has: More importantly, the video highlights the wonderful work […]

December 16, 2013 | Posted in Food Recovery, Hunger, Stats | Comments closed

Visualizing Food Waste XXIV

I sure love me some infographics. This one, created by the Debt Advisory Centre mostly depicts UK data, with some global facts sprinkled throughout. A few quick points: Roughly speaking, tonnes = tons  (1 tonne = 1.10 tons) I like how it emphasizes the magnitude of waste stemming from date labels and taking too much. The […]

December 11, 2013 | Posted in Stats | Comments closed

Let’s End Hunger

I consider most wasted food to be a lost opportunity to curb hunger. As a result, that should provide motivation to trim the former to chip away at the latter. Now. In light of the holiday season, SNAP cuts going into effect and the movement for fair wages for fast food workers, it’s high time […]

December 6, 2013 | Posted in Hunger | Comments closed

GOBBLE Your Way to a Waste-free Turkey Day

Sad news, folks: every Thanksgiving, Americans squander 400 Statues of Liberty worth of turkey, by weight. That’s a lot of forsaken fowl—more than 200 million pounds—and a sign of how wasteful we’ve become. It’s time we stop this Turkey Day tomfoolery. First, throwing away 35 percent of our turkey is oh-so-ungrateful. It undermines the spirit […]

November 28, 2013 | Posted in Events, History and Culture, Household, Leftovers | Comments closed