Category Archives: International

Friday Buffet

Despite its odd tone, this NY Times Magazine article was encouraging because food pieces in mainstream (some might say highbrow) publications rarely discuss leftovers. OK, so it’s lobster leftovers, but the author does advocate boiling the shell and assorted remnants to flavor a risotto. So that’s neat. — — Jamaicans have stopped bobsledding long enough […]

July 11, 2008 | Also posted in Friday Buffet, Household | Comments closed

Blame Game

Yesterday, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown fanned the food waste flames via comments to the media. Brown, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, showed his financial stripes in saying that food waste was partly due to “unnecessary demand.” If we are to get food prices down, we must also do more to deal with unnecessary […]

July 8, 2008 | Also posted in Supermarket | Comments closed

Thursday Buffet

Japan wastes one-fourth of their food, according to Japan’s Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry. As reported in China Daily, Japan tosses 19 million tonnes of food waste annually (about one-third of which is edible at the time of tossing). That percentage is a bit less than the U.S. (estimates range from one-fourth to one-half and […]

July 3, 2008 | Also posted in Food Recovery, Friday Buffet, Supermarket, Trayless | Comments closed

Picky, Picky

Fresh from the UK comes this food waste horror story: European Union sizing requirements required a British wholesaler to throw away 5,000 kiwis. Here’s a slightly less sensationalistic view of the story. An inspection of the fruit found that a number of the batch weighed 58 grams, with 62 grams the low-end limit. Tim Down, […]

June 30, 2008 | Also posted in Farm, History and Culture, Supermarket | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Here’s a neat idea: six Seattle area families held a contest to see who could cut the most weight from their garbage. The winning family trimmed its trash by 82 percent in just six weeks. Sure, it helps that King County allows residents to put food waste in the yard waste bin that is collected, […]

June 27, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Technology | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Don’t waste bananas–they might not be around much longer (at least not at $0.49/lb.) — — This just in: Australians waste $6 billion worth of food. Maybe it’s time Aussies *not* ‘put an extra shrimp on the barbie.’ Apparently those in the Australian capital of Canberra waste the most. Fortunately, Australia’s first food recovery operation, […]

June 20, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Food Recovery, Friday Buffet, Household, Restaurant | Comments closed

Israeli Food Recovery Q & A

Table to Table (T2T) is Israel’s leading food rescue organization. Joseph Gitler, an American immigrant from New York, founded the group in 2003. Five years and countless pounds of rescued food later, the group continues to feed hungry Israelis. Chief Operating Officer Gidi Kroch sat down with me (in an e-mail kind of way) to […]

June 18, 2008 | Also posted in Food Recovery, Q & A | Comments closed

Editorial Report

An op-ed by Cooper Lloyd in The Washington Post‘s new Green section pushed for city-wide curbside composting. If it adopted this kind of progressive plan, Washington could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, free up space in its landfills and even generate fertilizer to keep the city’s parks and public spaces beautiful. In countering one potential […]

June 16, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Stats | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

This Marketplace (radio) piece introduces Billy Vasquez, a.k.a. the “99 cent Chef,” a food blogger who makes meals from ingredients sourced at 99-cent stores. I enjoyed this exchange on buying spinach there (no idea if it’s canned, frozen or fresh): Newnam: Do you have to worry about the dates? Vasquez: Hey, it’s still green. That’s […]

June 13, 2008 | Also posted in Events, Food Safety, Friday Buffet | Comments closed

Trash Snatched!!

I got a few chuckles out of this story from Britain. In order to assess Sussex residents’ food wasting habits, the district council sorted 30 homes’ trash. The problem, alas, was that they didn’t tell people. This “intrusive” (according to a local politician making a meal out of the affair) act angered some Sussexites. I […]

June 12, 2008 | Also posted in Waste Stream | Comments closed