Kong-sized waste

Hefty plate waste after eating out isn’t just an American specialty. Thanks to its abundance of restaurants and hotels, wasted food comprises one third of Hong Kong’s landfill space. (The US average is about 12 percent.)

To reduce their food waste, local eateries have implemented an interesting idea–fining buffet diners for uneaten food. Voice of America News reports that 30 restaurants employ tactics like charging $1.30 per uneaten sushi at an “all you can eat” sushi place.

Local environmentalists Green Student Council surveyed diners and discovered these startling data:

“…we find that about 87 percent of them always left some food behind,” Ho says. “So we also find that 44 percent of these respondents say that they often left over 30 percent or more.”

It’s not shocking that in an economic capital like Hong Kong, restaurateurs have created an innovative “pay for what you don’t eat” system. That or charging a per-pound cost for buffet plates seem like better options than the standard “all you can eat” model. As that name suggests, it usually results in overeating and wasted food from half-eaten plates.

The article also touches on how Hong Kong’s Festival Walk mall uses a digester to reduce the volume of their daily 1.8 tons of food waste they send to landfills. This flurry of waste-related news may warrant a research trip–anything to get to Hong Kong’s dim sum palaces and buffets! If I do go, however, I promise to choose wisely to avoid being fined.

May 10, 2007 | Posted in International, Restaurant, Stats, Unfinished Food Charge | Comments closed

Stamp Out Hunger

It’d be silly to blog on food waste without talking about helping the hungry. To wit: Stamp Out Hunger. Thanks to this neat idea now in its 15th year you don’t even have to leave your house to help those less fortunate. Just leave non-perishable food items in a bag beside your mailbox this Saturday and your letter carrier will deliver them to the nearest food bank.

This is a complete win-win. You can avoid waste while helping those less fortunate. Considering that 25 percent of what we bring into our homes does not get eaten (according to my interview with Garbage Project director William Rathje), you should be able to find some non-perishables to donate. Check the back of your pantry shelves and I’m guessing you’ll be surprised. 

Last year 70.5 million pounds were collected. Sounds good until you figure that that’s less than a pound per household. Come on America, we can all kick in at least a can of beans!

    

May 9, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery, Hunger, Stats | Comments closed

Cape Breton Curbside Composting

In a bit of food waste news, Cape Breton is starting to compost its household food scraps. On Monday, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality began the widespread delivery of green bins for separating all organic waste from regular trash.

We here at WastedFood applaud the move to divert wet, heavy food waste and all organic materials from the waste stream. Producing less food waste, however, is an even nobler goal. Don’t just take my word for it, ask the Environmental Protection Agency.

Up North, the Canadian peninsula hopes to reach the ambitious goal of diverting 75 percent of all materials from landfill. Fortunately, they’re not too fussy about what materials they residents can compost:

Green carts are designed to store organic waste materials from the home and yard, like table scraps, food waste, used paper towels, napkins, fish, bones, meat, shellfish and leaf and yard waste like grass and leaves.

Cape Breton, a scenic Atlantic outpost I’ve had the good fortune to visit, isn’t breaking new ground, but joining elite company. San Francisco has a long-standing green bin program that allows residential and commercial composting, as does Toronto. Meanwhile, Portland, Ore., allows businesses but not individuals to compost. 

Here’s to hoping that this list keeps growing.

May 8, 2007 | Posted in Household, International | Comments closed

Call for photos

All you would-be Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bressons and Peter Parkers, this post’s for you. To include more interaction on the site, I’m asking you to send in photos of food waste. They could be from your personal experiences or things you’ve seen out there in the world.

Please e-mail pics of whatever you think falls under the food waste category. Send photos to wasted food at gmail dot com.

I’m leaving it wide open to encourage participation and creativity. My goal is to have a wasted food photo gallery, so there’s no deadline. While you’ll get bonus points for artistic shots, don’t let that stand in your way. The content is what’s important.

Here are two to get you in the mood:

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May 7, 2007 | Posted in General | Comments closed

Beach (Food) Rescue

In maintaining this site, I occasionally hear about some clever food recovery schemes. Recently, Bill Spier wrote in and told me about his A Second Helping operation that collects unused groceries from beach rentals.

What a perfect idea! When you’ve rented a vacation condo and bought a week’s worth of groceries, there’s inevitably some excess food. I know this option would have come in handy during my family’s last vacation.

Every summer Saturday–rental changeover day–Spier sets up shop in a church parking lot to accept donations. Contributions are usually 15 to 20 pounds and include hot dogs, eggs, cereal, fruit and canned goods. Spier told me (by email) that he once received a whole smoked turkey from a traveler and more than 100 pounds of canned goods from a local who was moving. Some area residents have heard about A Second Helping or noticed Spier’s white “Food Drop” sign.  

Spier keeps perishables safe in a large cooler inside his truck. He drops the donated food at an area church less than an hour after he stops collecting at noon. 

What began at Holden Beach, N.C., in July 2005 now has three drop-off spots at beaches near the South Carolina border. Spier modeled his effort after a similar one in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., named after the Wright brothers. Hopefully, this food recovery niche will also take flight.

May 2, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery, Food Safety | Comments closed

Scrambling for Eggs

As I mentioned before, I’m a member of the NC Food Diversion Task Force. It’s a new group (we’re just working on our mission statement) with members from all walks of life. We met today for the third time at the pastoral RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International) building.

What jumped out at me during today’s meeting was the obstacle that regulations play in thwarting food donations. We all recognize the importance of food safety, especially in light of recent health scares. But a reinterpretation of an existing USDA ruling meant that the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina lost its main source of eggs last November.

The company that delivers eggs to a major supermarket used to take back the rejected cartons on the same truck and donate them to the Food Bank. These cartons typically have one or two broken eggs, but the rest are fine. But the company received a reminder that this practice violated USDA regulations preventing such “comingling” of fresh eggs and the rejects for possible contamination risk.

As a result, the Food Bank lost its weekly supply of more than 10,000 pounds of eggs, about a half tractor trailer full. The Food Bank now gets just five percent of that amount by making pickups at individual stores. The rest end up in the dumpster.

I’m no expert, but this seems ridiculous. By placing the damaged eggs below the fresh ones, you’ve minimized contamination fears and saved thousands of pounds of eggs.

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FYI, if you haven’t seen it, have a look at my op-ed about keeping food out of landfills that ran recently in The Charlotte Observer.

April 30, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery, Food Safety | Comments closed

Rockin’ Waste

Today, I learned a little more about a new area for me—avoiding food waste at concerts and sporting events. I was excited to learn more about this area from Syd Mandelbaum of Rock and Wrap It Up! (their exclamation point, not mine).

The New York non-profit launched in 1991, but started operating nationally in 1993 when it got The Black Crowes (remember them?) to mandate that all excess backstage food be donated to food shelters. Ever since, Rock and Wrap It Up! has been getting individual acts (The Rolling Stones, Kenny Chesney), venues (Jones Beach Theater, BankAtlantic Center) and tours (Ozzfest, Lollapalooza) to donate unsold and unused food.

Most of the time, the donations are concession stand items that have been prepared but not sold. That can be anything from burgers and dogs to subs and salads. Plus, they’re all wrapped, so contamination is not a worry.

Along the way, Rock and Wrap It Up! involved sports teams, too. There are now 24 franchises that donate unsold food. What began with the Detroit Tigers and pitcher Mike Maroth, now includes the Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Braves, Knicks, N.Y. Rangers, Florida Panthers, Patriots and N.Y. Giants.

Mandelbaum said that the largest postgame donations come from the (football) Giants. While that’s not shocking, given Giants’ Stadium’s 80,000 capacity, one game usually yields 1,200 meals! Now that’s worth an exclamation point.

April 26, 2007 | Posted in Food Recovery, Food Safety | Comments closed

M.R.E(fficiency) II

We recently discussed military food waste, where I noted that more than a third of MREs are wasted. I learned this during my visit to the US Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.

From what I was told, most of the waste comes not from half-eaten items so much as untouched ones. Soldiers “field strip” their rations, taking only the parts of the meals they want in an effort to reduce their pack weight. I’d do the same if I had a pack approaching 80 lbs.

During my visit, the Natick folks told me the MREs are made to last three years at 80 degrees, six months at 100 degrees and one month at 120 (F). Given that FEMA stored their hurricane relief rations in an uncooled trailer for an entire Alabama summer, the 279 truckloads of food thrown away wasn’t shocking. MREs, with their rugged plastic pouch, are pretty rugged, but they can’t work miracles.

When I visited Natick, I experienced the testing to see how products taste at various stages of storage. The Sensory Science Lab was testing Combos at various ages. As you’ll see below, I got to see if I could taste a difference between, say, a month-old and a year-old Combo (Pizza and Cheddar flavor Combos–troops like seeing name brand products).

I noticed a difference, but not enough to say that the older Combos should be thrown out. Then again, they weren’t stored in a scorching hot trailer. No government agency would be so, er…only FEMA would be so foolish.

 

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April 25, 2007 | Posted in Food Safety, Technology | Comments closed

M.R.E(fficiency)

We recently discussed storage times for Meals Ready to Eat in the aftermath of FEMA throwing away $43 million of food improperly stored.

On a related note, I just visited the Natick (Mass.) Army labs, where they develop MREs and all of the U.S. Armed Forces’ food. There, I met separately with Dr. Herbert Meiselman and Gerald Darsch, director of the Combat Feeding group, to discuss how the Army views food waste.

I came to the topic after reading about it in Brian Wansink’s book Mindless Eating. Wansink helped the Army find ways to get soldiers to eat enough during combat. Looking at things from my perspective, that means there was food waste. 

There still is. It turns out that troops throw away more than a third of the packaged MREs they get. While Meiselman acknowledged this is a lot of food, he noted that there’s not much they can do about it. The factors that would increase consumption–leisurely eating, socializing during meals–don’t mesh with military operations. Staying alive and not providing the enemy with a centralized target take priority, understandably so.

Food waste, it seems, is just another cost of war.

April 23, 2007 | Posted in General, Technology | Comments closed

Disastrous Waste

In a shocking bit of front-page food waste news, Washington Post reported today that FEMA wasted $43 million of prepared food last summer because it ran out of warehouse space. Truckloads of MRE-like meals–6 million of them–spoiled as they sat outside in the Alabama heat. 

This situation makes an easy meal for politicians playing the public watchdog role. Enter Senator Joe Lieberman: “I am angry about this senseless waste of taxpayer money and hopeful that the FEMA reorganization that our committee recommended . . . will put an end to screw-ups like this,” said Lieberman.

I find it interesting that, as with most publicized instances of waste, nobody comments on the squandering of food itself. Just on the waste of tax dollars.

Some of the food waste came as a result of a happily light 2006 hurricane season. But much came as an overreaction to the aid shortages after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA’s deputy director, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson admitted that yesterday. To prevent more shortcomings like the 2005 Gulf Coast disaster, Johnson said they used “brute force” in stockpiling massive amount of food, water and ice. To which I’d ask, can we be a bit less brute? Or pair that brawny supply with some shrewd storage?

After Katrina, less than half of the 182 million pounds of ice sent to the Gulf was used. Trying to repurpose the ice, The Post reported, “trucks roamed the country for two weeks,” and one ended up at an Arizona zoo where “the ice was used by polar bears and other animals.”

If FEMA couldn’t find some spare shelf space in an air-conditioned building, here’s another idea: How about using some of the millions of pounds of ice it squandered to stop the food waste?

April 13, 2007 | Posted in Food Safety, General, Stats | Comments closed