T’was the Day After Christmas…

Christmas leftovers, anyone?

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December 26, 2011 | Posted in Household | Comments closed

Holiday Buffet

Tree gleaning and Chinese food on Christmas?! (And the movie comes afterward, right?) If only I lived in L.A…

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Wait, what?! A report out of LA says that 62% of students there don’t have enough time to eat all of their lunch? That can’t be good for food waste.

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Glad to hear that the city of Tacoma has given residents an early Christmas present–curbside composting, coming this spring.

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This article has it all: general green tips for the holidays, a discussion of
packaging waste vs food waste and minimizing holiday food waste.

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Similarly, here’s more on the topic of food packaging vs. food waste. Unfortunately, it can be one of the only times reducing food waste conflicts with another green cause.

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Token Hanukkah bit: I’ve been surprised by how seamlessly (If I do say so myself) I was able to sneak some leftover veggies into latkes. Just sayin…

Happy Holidays, folks!

December 23, 2011 | Posted in Food Recovery, Friday Buffet, Household, School | Comments closed

The Gift of Food Recovery

Lest you have any doubts on how utterly doable food recovery is…the below video will hopefully communicate that just a few people working together can make a huge dent in local hunger by rescuing and redistributing food. (Heck, one woman and a van can work wonders.)

December 21, 2011 | Posted in Food Recovery | Comments closed

Giving the Gift of Reduced Waste

With the holidays fast approaching, I wanted to pass on a few quick tips to help you minimize holiday food waste:

1. Don’t cook too much food. Thanksgiving celebrates abundance. As far as I know, none of the winter holidays do. Get a good guest count and try not to go overboard. After all, we can only eat so much goose.

2. Don’t serve too much. Let family and friends serve themselves so they can take as much or as little as they want. Beware the “good provider syndrome,”

3. Be proactive with leftovers. Share the love and leftovers–redistribute them to other guests.  And then repurpose what you have leftover. It helps to have an idea of other dishes you can create with leftovers (i.e. roast chicken to chicken soup).

Bonus: Eat some fruitcake–nobody else is going to!

December 19, 2011 | Posted in History and Culture, Household | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

It’s official: You can ignore those ‘best before’ dates on your eggs. (At least that’s the word in the UK.)

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This article on Bon Appetit Management food waste minimization at Penn is music to my ears.

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Wish you had a sleek kitchen compost container? Now UCan.

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Finally, it’s nice to see the big boys like Waste Management getting more and more interested in composting.

December 16, 2011 | Posted in Composting, Food Safety, Friday Buffet | Comments closed

Paying for Your Waste

Straight from Saudi Arabia…here’s a restaurant charging a fee for uneaten food…that goes to a Somalian charity. Hard to argue with that last part.

My second thought: I guess taking home leftovers isn’t big in Saudi Arabia. Also, showing the words “the greedy are punished” burning embers flicker on screen made me think the video was headed in another direction.

Any opinions?

December 14, 2011 | Posted in International, Restaurant | Comments closed

Corn for Kitties

I just learned about this kitty litter made from corn. And I am speechless.

Okay, deep breath.

Wow, this is a terrible idea! Talk about a waste of potential food, farm land, the ag inputs (natural resources) that go into growing our food. And a clear sign we are producing too much food.

Given the impact that conventional agriculture has on the planet, it makes little sense that so much of corn goes to feed animals and fuel cars. It makes less sense for it become fodder for cats’ target practice.

Sure, the kind of corn used as kitty litter isn’t fit for human consumption. But we’d be much better off, from a climate change and soil health perspective, not growing such an abundance of corn that it winds up being used for such trivial purposes.

Finally, has there ever been a better example as to why our current farm subsidies need reforming?

December 12, 2011 | Posted in Farm, Household | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Whenever a publication as august as The Financial Times weighs in on dumpster diving, I always link to it (and try to match the paper’s salmon color).

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Donating prepared foods can be harder than you think, but it’s important! As is reducing the overall excess at holiday or other gatherings.

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If you’re gonna build a casino, getting a $2.5 million federal renewable energy grant to defray the cost of an on-site anaerobic digester is like hitting the jackpot. It’s a solid ideas, as there’s sure to be plenty of buffet food waste to convert to energy…

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Finally, congratulations to the National Hockey League’s Food Recovery Program. The NHL program, which diverted arena food that would have been thrown away into 163,000 meals last year, won the Sports for the Environment Award.

December 9, 2011 | Posted in Casino, Energy, Friday Buffet | Comments closed

(British) Progress!

While the US grocery industry is slowly turning to the topic of food waste–huzzah!–their British counterparts are already a year into a voluntary agreement to trim waste.

More than 50 UK grocery retailers have signed on to The Courtauld Commitment Phase 2, which sets many waste reduction goals. Food is one of them. Interestingly, the food waste goal focuses on homes: reduce home food and drink waste by 4% from 2009 to 2012.

You might be wondering: What does that have to do with grocers? That’s the best part–UK supermarkets have taken some responsibility for their role in prompting home food waste. As a result, many grocers have launched campaigns to preach the food waste reduction gospel to their customers.

And so…there has been a 3% reduction in home food waste, according to WRAP. They are on schedule to meet the 2012 goal. Even more impressive, though, are the numbers in comparing 2006/7 with 2010. In that time, household food waste dropped 13% and “avoidable” waste decreased by 18%.

That represents a saving of millions in cash and CO2 equivalent tonnes. Once more–Huzzah!

December 7, 2011 | Posted in Energy, Environment, Household, International | Comments closed

Greetings from Milan

Buongiorno, friends. I’m at the Barilla’s International Forum on Food and Nutrution. I just participated in a panel on food waste, which was pretty fascinating.

First, it was heartening to experience so many intelligent people considering the topic of wasted food. Second, the level of research on the topic in Europe is impressive. And the commitment to reducing waste–as epitomized by the European Commission’s 50% reduction goal by 2020–is equally encouraging.

Now, it’s just a matter of making it happen. Hopefully, with initiatives like my co-panelist Andrea Segre’s Last Minute Market (you can translate the page well in Chrome) and the upcoming European campaign A Year Against Waste (2013), this will happen sooner rather than later.

Ciao!

November 30, 2011 | Posted in International, Personal | Comments closed