Author Archives: Jonathan

That’s Bananas…

I spend a lot of time in supermarkets, and I’ve never seen this… …until this weekend. No idea what is going on here, but it was a pretty clean cut straight through that banana.

May 20, 2013 | Posted in Supermarket | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Much of the D.C. deer population have completed a quick journey from USDA sharpshooters scopes to soup kitchen plates. D.C. Central Kitchen recently received 600 pounds of ground venison from the National Park Service’s (necessary/unnecessary?) deer cull in Rock Creek Park. — — If supermarkets aren’t going to dramatically reduce their waste, the least they can do […]

May 17, 2013 | Posted in Energy, International, Supermarket | Comments closed

Packaging Pros and Cons

I’ve been thinking a lot about packaging recently, as I’ve been writing something about Austin’s mostly packaging-free grocer, in.gredients. From a life-cycle assessment perspective, packaging is environmentally harmful. It’s just more stuff we’re using oil to create, often unnecessarily, that usually ends up in a landfill. Yet, it’s not that simple.  Smarter packaging could limit […]

May 16, 2013 | Posted in Waste Stream | Comments closed

Monday Buffet

Wasted food = wasted water. This handy Ecocentric blog post reminds us of that truth. — — Mixed news from Massachusetts: The DEP confirmed its upcoming 2014 commercial food waste ban and pushed for a 30 percent waste reduction by 2020 (Hooray!). But it also announced that they would remove the moratorium on building new […]

May 13, 2013 | Posted in International, School, Supermarket, Waste Stream | Comments closed

FRN gets BUX

It’s always nice to see good empowered. Especially when that good is an organization run by young adults. Yesterday, the youth-powered Food Recovery Network received a cool $150,000 grant from the Sodexo Foundation to redistribute edible but unsellable food to people who need it. With this grant money, FRN will bring on full-time staff, provide […]

May 8, 2013 | Posted in College, Food Recovery | Comments closed

Building Toward Less Waste

City Harvest does fabulous work recovering edible but unsellable food in New York City. Now, with a new, 45,000 square foot facility in Queens, they’ll be even more efficient in their work. Watch City Harvest’s new food rescue facility being built…very quickly!

May 3, 2013 | Posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

Iowa Project Fights Food Waste

Not every state has its own Waste Reduction Center. Even fewer have a state-wide Food Waste Reduction Project. Actually, I can’t think of one. While Iowa has long had the former (a part of the University of Northern Iowa for 25 years), it just now has the latter with the launch of the Iowa Food […]

May 2, 2013 | Posted in Waste Stream | Comments closed

Politicizing Waste Reduction Advice?

Well that’s unfortunate. British politicians and/or the British media have politicized advice on reducing food waste. The Independent reported Environment Minister Richard Benyon’s remarks about families losing £50 per month through waste and follows it with objections from the opposition. As an American, I’m not aware of all the subtle class machinations and tax policy at […]

April 29, 2013 | Posted in Household, International, Leftovers | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

More than 100 New York City restaurants–including ones owned by Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich and Danny Meyer–have pledged to cut their waste in half. One thing conspicuously absent in the writeup was any kind of timeline. Still, great news! — — The GRACE Communications Foundation (the folks behind The Meatrix) just launched a new site on food waste, and […]

April 26, 2013 | Posted in College, Environment, Food Safety, Restaurant | Comments closed

Iowa Action…and Inaction

With a nice ‘not only on Earth Day’ lead, Iowa City’s Press-Citizen praises the voluntary composting of many area restaurants and supermarkets. That’s encouraging. Less encouraging news from the article: a bill that would curb the amount of food waste sent to landfills remains stalled in the Iowa House Natural Resources Committee. The bill previously passed the Senate, […]

April 24, 2013 | Posted in Composting, Environment, School | Comments closed