Category Archives: Waste Stream

Dispose All?

Many of you have written in to ask about a common household appliance: garbage disposals. Specifically, do disposals provide a positive solution for the inevitable household food waste? Recently, Slate‘s Green Lantern examined whether it’s better to put food waste in the trash or zap it with your power ring a garbage disposal. For those […]

October 6, 2008 | Also posted in Household | Comments closed

Numbers

Often, when I read an article on food waste, I see something like this: ‘Food waste makes up 12 percent of our landfills.’ That makes a lot of sense when you see this EPA info. Digging deeper, however, we learn that it’s actually more grim: Food waste makes up 18 percent of landfill contents. Here’s […]

August 18, 2008 | Also posted in Composting | Comments closed

California Bill

If you happen to be in Los Angeles today around lunchtime, there’s a press conference at a Venice soup kitchen to promote a pending California bill that would enable increased food donation. Senate Bill 1443 would allow catering customers to decide what to do with their leftovers–donate it to those in need or take it […]

August 8, 2008 | Also posted in Events, Legislation | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Because seeing is believing: Here’s the booty from a dumpster diving expedition that shows how much good food grocery stores throw out. — — Don’t waste that pigeon squab?!? UPDATE: I noticed that Berkeley’s famed Chez Panisse is featuring squab on August 9th. — — San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has proposed fines to ensure […]

August 1, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Friday Buffet, Supermarket | Comments closed

I Love L.A.

Cheer up, L.A. Your basketball team may have gotten smoked by the Celtics, but at least things are looking up on the food waste front. The City of Angels will launch a pilot program for household food waste composting in September. While the test program will only include 8,700 homes, let’s hope it catches hold […]

June 19, 2008 | Also posted in Composting | 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 International | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

This just in from the Not In My Backyard Our Park Department: A British Columbia business association requested that a church stop handing out food donations in a park because it was attracting too many “indigent people.” I guess the association won’t go for this plan, then. — — Food waste and water loss are […]

May 23, 2008 | Also posted in Friday Buffet, Household, International, Personal, Restaurant | Comments closed

Boing Boing Responses

Yesterday’s Times article has prompted some spirited discussion in this Boing Boing forum, which is wonderful. And healthy. I contemplated commenting in that forum, but had waaay too much to say. Instead, I’ve compiled some of my reactions to the comments here, with reference to the order of their appearance in the thread: (19) People […]

May 19, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Farm, Food Recovery, General, Supermarket, Technology | Comments closed

Vermiculture Club

Vermicomposters, put yourself on the map–literally! Oakland’s Steven Chow recently found out about vermiculture, or composting with worms, and set up a worm bin at his home. Steven launched the site to see who else was worm binning. Based on the site, plenty of people–156 as of this posting. The site also features a forum […]

May 15, 2008 | Also posted in Composting | Comments closed

The Misfits

If you’re like me, you could use a little help getting through your Tuesday. On that front, Weird Al never fails. Anyway, meet Violet, Gordon and the Gang of Misfit Fruits (and Veggies): Wow. We sure do love to anthropomorphize food, but they’re effective spokespeople. Also, isn’t it a bit odd that these fruits and […]

May 6, 2008 | Also posted in Food Recovery, History and Culture | Comments closed