The Produce Project: Day 1–Packaged Waste

My first day of work in a supermarket produce department began at 8 a.m. Ten minutes into it, I was throwing away food.

They’d get to the orientation later, I was told, we had to “cull” all of the “out-of-code” products. They got me an apron and pointed me to the wall-length cold case of packaged produce. Basically, I had to pull all packages with a sell-by date of that day. I’ve written before about the difference between sell-by dates and use-by dates. Items are often good up to a week past the former, but here I was yanking packages from the shelf at 8:10 on the morning of their sell-by date.

I culled cut mushrooms, stir fry mix (cut peppers and onions), veggie trays with dip (crudités), watermelon chunks, pineapple chunks, a mix of pineapple, watermelon and cantaloupe and more. Based on their container weights, I tossed 24 pounds of fresh cut, Del Monte fruit that first morning. In addition, a few of the veggie trays had an “enjoy-by” date of four days from that day, but it’s sell-by date meant they must be pulled!

Not surprisingly, most of the stuff that I culled was pre-cut and pre-washed. When items are cut up, they oxidize and go bad quicker than if they were whole. Now, they don’t go bad as quickly as their sell-by dates indicate; none of the packages I took off the shelves were things I wouldn’t eat. But that phenomenon of faster-aging items produce is behind the cautious sell-by dates. In this case, convenience causes waste.

While I worked on the pre-cut and wrapped produce, a co-worker culled the loose stuff. When he was finished, his tray looked like a restaurant buffet. We both finished at about the same time and headed back to the produce room, where my boss was washing some lettuce. I asked him what I should do with my cart full of culled product.

“It all just goes in the dumpster,” he said. 

March 19, 2007 | Posted in Supermarket, The Produce Project | Comments closed

The Produce Project

In researching wasted food, I’ve spoken with supermarket spokespeople and executives who cling to the party line: ‘We really don’t waste much.’ Yet, I’ve also seen stores donate shopping carts full of unsellable but edible food while on food recovery runs. Imagine what happens at stores without established donation programs.

To move past grocery stores’ rhetoric on the amount of food they throw away, I decided to get a first-hand look. I would work in a supermarket produce department.

In addition to learning just how much product is squandered, I wanted to understand why an industry with minute profit margins and advanced software systems still throws out tons of food each year.

Calling it “The Produce Project” makes it sound a bit more scientific or glamorous than it was. In reality, I was working an entry level job at a large chain. Even still, it was a bit of an adventure and I learned something new every day. Check back tomorrow, when I’ll start detailing my experiences.

But first, just a few quick notes on my methods. I’m writing in the past tense because I’m no longer in the employ of this supermarket that will remain nameless. In total, I worked there for about three months. While there, I didn’t approach work as a journalist digging dirt, but as a produce associate washing it from lettuce. I worked diligently–as my one-month review attested–observed plenty and jotted notes on break or after work. In between, I restocked a lot of bananas.

March 15, 2007 | Posted in Supermarket, The Produce Project | Comments closed

The Home Front

I recently came across stats for food waste in Orange County, North Carolina, where I live. My immediate reaction–Wow!

It seems we waste a fair amount of food in N.C.’s O.C. In 2005, food waste was one-fifth of the county’s waste stream, its largest component. Considering overall waste for the county was 56,303 tons, 11,091 tons were at one point edible. That means the county could fill almost four football fields with food waste.

In the town of Chapel Hill, food waste was 27.5 percent of the waste stream. I imagine its number is higher than surrounding towns because of Chapel Hill’s impressive food waste composting program. Keep in mind that these figures don’t account for the waste put down garbage disposals.

Looking at trends, residential food waste doubled from 1995 to 2005, going from 11 to 22 percent. Commercial food waste also doubled in the same period, rising from 12 to 24 percent, after rounding.

While our overall goal should be to utilize as much food as possible, a secondary one is to prevent food from going to landfills. As the numbers show, we have plenty of room for improvement.

On a personal level, I’m going to start putting my food waste where my mouth is, er…or at least where my food politics lie. In other words, I’m going to start composting. Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law, I now have a compost bin. With any luck, I’ll be set up and diverting food scraps from landfill by the weekend.

Of course, I’ll continue to try to reduce the amount of food that is wasted in our house–the most important step on the EPA Food Waste Recovery Hierarchy. But it’s nice to have a fall back for that head of cabbage that gets lost at the back of the fridge.  

March 14, 2007 | Posted in Household, Restaurant, Stats | Comments closed

Imported Waste

Friday, I talked to Yolanda Soto, director of the Wilson-Batiz Borderland Food Bank in Nogales, Ariz. Her food rescue group recovers millions of pounds of imported Mexican produce that would otherwise go to waste.

As I’ve learned, importing produce is essentially a game of timing. Produce, as we all know, doesn’t last forever. Because items are subsequently shipped across the nation from Nogales (50 percent of all Mexican produce comes through there), ripeness is the enemy. 

Nogales-based distributors inspect cases for any sign of ripening, Soto said. With most produce examined at that stage of the food chain, green is good. Any sign of ripening means the product won’t have enough of a shelf life once it reaches its final destination, which could be thousands of miles away. “If, for whatever reason, the product doesn’t meet the distributor’s requirements—if it’s too big, too small, too red or too green—they pass it on to us,” Soto said.

While the produce’s appearance and normal shipping problems cause plenty of waste, unusual occurrences amplify losses. After a few recent drug busts at the border, federal authorities decided to search every truck (usually it’s done randomly or where there’s suspicion), causing day-long waits, damaging produce and frustrating Mexican drivers. The Tucson Citizen had a nice recap of the events. What’s more, a plan to speed up border wait times isn’t looking likely, as The Arizona Republic reported.

Those delays caused ripening and contributed to a vast excess of perfectly good but unshippable tomatoes. In the last two and a half weeks, the Nogales food bank recovered 5 million pounds of tomatoes. It received so much product, Soto couldn’t find enough takers for it. Despite a nationwide offer of free tomatoes to those who would pay for the freight, she had to throw away 1 million pounds.

Such border delays are even more frustrating for Mexican growers and truckers and their U.S. distribution partners because they know the inspection system can work. “(Two weekends ago), it went pretty quick,” truck owner Jose Durazo told the Tucson Citizen. “I think all the port workers wanted to rush home to watch the (the Super Bowl), so they worked really fast. So you see, it can be done.”

March 12, 2007 | Posted in Farm, International | Comments closed

Waste in Your World

One of the perks of running this site is getting feedback from readers. Recently, I was excited to receive this question from Kelley, a middle school student in Russelville, Ark. I’ll let her explain:

My name is Kelley and I’m in the seventh grade. Our class is a part of Project Citizen, it is where you find a problem in you community and try to fix the problem. I am writing to you today to ask your help. We are trying to find alternative ideas for the use of food waste. Could you please tell me some ideas that are taking place to use up food wastage.

In a follow-up e-mail, Kelley told me that she’s trying to save food in his school cafeteria from being thrown out. I told her I’d try to help him rescue this potentially wasted food and set out to learn about the Arkansas food recovery scene.

After a quick map consult, I called the food bank nearest Rusellville, the Little Rock branch of the Arkansas Food Bank Network. Unfortunately, they don’t take prepared food. They referred me to another Little Rock operation, Potluck Food Rescue, that picks up prepared food that would otherwise be thrown out. Sadly, they won’t make the three-hour round trip to Rusellville for anything but a large load. As I’ve found elsewhere, the near infinite waste trumps non-profits’ finite gas budget, time and supply of trucks and drivers.

Carol at Potluck said that they have gone as far as Russellville on a few occasions to pick up from ConAgra and Tyson Foods. These national suppliers will call Potluck when they have 20,000 to 25,000 pounds of meat to donate. Stunned by those figures, I asked how that happened. Carol mentioned that such excess occurs from processing mistakes like printing the wrong date on packages or damaging boxes so they can’t be sold.

As you can see, our food chain is far from perfect and errors can lead to great waste. Fortunately, food rescue groups like Potluck are positioned to prevent vast waste. But when a student notices her school cafeteria is squandering food, that small-scale waste is harder to prevent. “There are no rules for how far we go to make a pickup,” Carol said. “But if it’s less than 50 pounds, we usually don’t get it.”

As Carol suggested, I told Kelley to look for local shelters and retirement homes that might collect food from the school. We’ll see how she fares in this project. Regardless, she’s off to a great start as an involved citizen.

March 6, 2007 | Posted in Processing Plants, School | Comments closed

More Campus Waste

As an example of campus food waste, Rutgers University students and staff waste more than one and a half pounds of food per meal. How do colleges waste so much food? In one quasi-word: All-you-can-eat. Given the food recycling figures from some schools, it seems more like all-you-can-waste.

With escalating room and board fees and upscale college dining, students expect variety and plenty and they get both. “The students don’t always eat what they take,” said Dianne Gravatt, Rutgers University’s Director of Environmental Services and Grounds. “They pay a certain amount and take what they want.”

Thinking back on my college years, I remember experiencing that freedom and I’m sure I wasted my share of food back at Wesleyan’s “MoCon” Dining Hall. When you couldn’t decide between the entree, pizza, grilled cheese and pasta bar, you took them all and left what you didn’t like. Given the abundance of options, I’m not shocked by the amount of food wasted.

At least Rutgers, a school with about 15,000 students on meal plans, tries to get students to think about what they take. Neilson Dining Hall has a sign that reads, “Please do not waste food.” Yet that’s easier said than done, as the school sends 3,000 tons of food to a pig farmer each year. Here’s what Jim Verner, facilities supervisor for the Division of Dining Services, told me on the topic:

We try to encourage students not to take more than they eat. They can come back as much as they want. We have signs telling them that the food that gets wasted is expensive. We post how much they would save in their meal plans if they didn’t waste the food. Things like ‘the amount of food you waste would feed 50,000 people in Darfur.’ It’s the old guilt trip. When I was growing up, it was ‘think of all the starving people in China.’ But what are you gonna do? There’s just waste. The good news is that it goes to a farmer and comes back as next week’s pork chops.

What’s more, the amount of food waste at Rutgers is increasing. “It used to be around 2,500 tons per year. Now it’s 3,000 and over. The board plans are up, from 13,000 to 15,000 [students] over the last 10 years, but at the same time take out has really grown. I can’t explain that.”

What’s more, obesity worries have toppled the ‘clean your plate’ ethos Verner referenced. As a result, today’s kids learn early on that there’s no need to finish what you take. Transporting that attitude to colleges’ giant, all-you-can-eat dining halls causes the exorbitant waste we’re now seeing. 

March 2, 2007 | Posted in College, Institutional, Stats | Comments closed

Campus Waste

A month ago, I wrote a post about college food waste. After more research, it’s worth taking a closer look. Thanks to RecycleMania, a college recycling contest that has a food waste category, we have access to some interesting numbers.

In the aforementioned Food Service Organics category, Rutgers University leads the list by with a three-week total of 79.05 pounds of food per person per week. That means the average Rutgers student or staff member throws out 26 pounds of food per week or about 1.25 pounds at every meal. 

Think about that for a second. I’m no mathematician, but that’s the same as the “beef” of five McDonald’s Quarter Pounders at every meal.

Dianne Gravatt, Rutgers Director of Environmental Services, said that their numbers are much higher than other competitors’ because they mistakenly used the food waste’s weight before they deliquified it. Many schools use Somat machines or “pulpers” to remove 75 to 80 percent of the water content, the real culprit in food waste’s heavyness. After Rutgers corrects its data, “We’re still going to be number one, but we’re not gonna be that high,” Gravatt said.

Well…Rutgers’ totals may go down if they report their pulped food weight, but unfortunately, the amount students waste seems accurate. To verify these numbers, I spoke with the Jim Verner, the guy who oversees the recycling of Rutgers’ food waste. Verner, facilities supervisor for the Division of Dining Services, said that last year a local pig farmer collected about 3,000 tons of (deliquified) food waste from the school.  If you add in the wet weight, convert to pounds and divide by the number of meal plan students, you get 33 pounds per person per week or more than one and a half pounds per person per meal.

Make that six Quarter Pounders.

To be fair, those numbers include inedible food preparation scraps. But they don’t include the food students discard when they eat takeout, which Verner says represents between 40 to 50 percent of all meals.

I should point out that Rutgers is on the right side of the food waste battle. While they may be squandering large amounts, at least they send their excess food to pig farmers (a win-win, since it costs them 50 percent less per ton than sending it to landfills). We have no reason to believe Rutgers wastes more or less than any other university, just that they’re better or more conscientious about recycling it. The reason we’re talking about them here is because they’re putting their numbers out there.

OK, fine–it’s also because their numbers are huge.

March 1, 2007 | Posted in Institutional, School, Stats | Comments closed

Breaking Even

Lately, we’ve been talking about restaurant’s increasing portion sizes, with the 2,020-calorie Chili’s fajita steak quesadilla with guacamole as the enormous entree poster child. But the bottom line is this: when we eat out, we waste more food.

Considering the 1,600 to 2,800 recommended daily calorie intake, most restaurants give us way too much. Aside from the heavy appetizers and gigantic main courses, soda has about 150 calories per 12 ounces and most cups have more than that amount. While we often overeat, we also tend to leave plenty behind. As Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating illustrates, diners tend to consume a certain portion of the plate, no matter how big it is.

This overeating and overwasting mostly happens at restaurants. This takes on added significance when you realize that we’re eating out more these days. Today, the total expenditures for eating at home are slightly higher than for eating away from the home. In 2005, food at home was 51.5 percent of total food expenditures. But USDA projects that by 2009, Americans will spend more of their food dollar away from home. According to the projections (see the chart at the bottom of page 72) through 2016, that trend will only continue. These numbers are even more startling considering that the definition used for “food away from home” does not include take-out or drive-thru orders. It is only food consumed where it is sold.

Restaurant chains will tell you they’re getting more efficient and wasting less. Some are, thanks to forecasting software. But demand can be unpredictable and food sellers hate to run out of anything. As a result, they overorder. Given the move to cut electricity costs through less refrigeration space, Plus, the gains made in ordering efficiency are often overshadowed by a new kind of waste–what we throw away from our plates. This “plate waste” or “post-consumer” waste is a real issue. Unlike when restaurants order or cook too much food, plate waste can’t be donated to a food shelter.

I’m convinced that from these two trends (needlessly huge portions and increased eating out) comes a real opportunity: a restaurant that serves less food for less money. I can imagine their first ad:

         Fade in on a 3-pound plate of spaghetti. and meatballs. Cut to a painfully full man loosening his belt.  

                                            NARRATOR (in a sensible, motherly tone)

                         At Nutrio’s*, we serve our meals on plates, not troughs.

* I’m flexible on the name

All you deep-pocketed investors out there reading, feel free to contact me. I’ll need something to do once I finish this “little” project.

February 22, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant, Stats | Comments closed

Talk is Cheap, Food Cheaper

Let’s face it, food is cheap. It may not feel that way when you shop at Whole Foods, but it is when you compare today’s food prices to historical ones. How little we pay for food helps explain the lack of reluctance to waste it, i.e. that more than 40 percent of all food produced in the US is thrown away.  

Looking at the USDA’s food expenditures chart, the amount of disposable income (after taxes) we spend on food has steadily decreased. It now sits at 9.9 percent, after descending from 23.5 percent in 1947. My parents, avid antiquers, gave me a 1934 insurance company brochure called The Family Food Supply: a guide to what to buy and why. In it, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Compnay advises that “Most families need to spend from one-quarter to one-third of their income for food.” This seems to make sense, as the USDA numbers from 1933 list the average food expenditure as 25.2 percent.

So what’s going on? Food prices aren’t actually decreasing, they’re staying relatively stable. Meanwhile, incomes are increasing. This relationship between income and price is instructive. The amount of your income that an item costs seems like a better indication of its value than the price.

American food is also cheap compared to that in other countries. Looking abroad, My (new) friends at the USDA’s Economic Research Service have compared U.S. food spending to foreign nations. While this chart uses a different measure–percent of our household consumption budget used on food–the message is the same. The U.S. tops the international list for cheapness of food. The US spends just 6.5 percent of its household budget on food. The number of the second place nation, Great Britain, is 40 percent higher than America’s. Food in industrialized, Western nations seems to have less value (as it relates to income). Bringing up the rear, Azerbaijan clocks in at a staggering 76.8 percent.  

As I said, I think a food’s true cost affects how willing we are to throw it out. For example, if you’re trimming a $1 green pepper are you a little less cautious compared to the $4 red pepper? I know I am.  

February 20, 2007 | Posted in Household, Restaurant, Stats | Comments closed

Second Helpings

Let’s talk another bite out of portions. As we’ve discussed, larger portions mean people eat more, but also leave more behind. In today’s America, obesity and waste somehow go hand-in-hand. 

In her all-encompassing book What to Eat, Marion Nestle tackles portions. Like a wise old aunt, she remembers the days when diners could finish their plate before it got cold. In response to restaurants’ defense that you can always take home leftovers, Nestle fires off this salvo:

I don’t like taking food home from restaurant meals because it never tastes as good the second time around. Instead, I want restaurants to offer what I consider to be real choices–reasonably light options on their menus in reasonable sizes. I wish restaurants would train waiters to be pleasant if you only order an appetizer or if you want to share portions. I wish they would give you at least a small price break for ordering a smaller portion.

To that, I’ll add: I wish waiters had a financial incentive to have people order sensibly, instead of the opposite. And unless you’re off to the theater (or some other event which prevents you from reaching your refrigerator) I wish everyone would take home what they don’t finish. Where I live, there are a few homeless people who wouldn’t mind half an entree.

Anyway, getting down off the soapbox, I’d say that The Cheesecake Factory’s gigantic portions are part of its identity. As they describe themselves in their 2005 annual report: “We believe our restaurants are recognized by consumers for offering exceptional value with generous food portions at moderate prices.”

And here’s how Nation’s Restaurant News describes their business model: “Large restaurants with a large, something-for-everyone menu that serve large portions to large numbers of people.”

The Cheesecake Factory experimented with smaller portions this summer. Whether that idea catches on, though, remains to be seen. Because the better value always seems to be the gargantuan option (the Super Size It phenomenon), stores and restaurants tend to lead us towards overeating and overwasting.

February 16, 2007 | Posted in Restaurant | Comments closed