Monday Buffet

Here’s NPR’s second story of the week relating to food recovery. I’m a source in this one!

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Massachusetts is clearing some red tape to pave the way for more anaerobic digestion. Wicked awesome!

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Meanwhile, the UK’s largest AD facility just opened in Staffordshire.

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This story on Malaysian restaurateurs’ responses to food waste provides real fodder for making an ethical argument against it.

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In an article on K.C. composting, the National Restaurant Association’s Chris Moyer provided a perspective we should and will see more in the coming years:

“Waste in general is not being viewed as waste any more,” the NRA’s Moyer said. “It’s a potential resource to be recovered.”

June 27, 2011 | Posted in Anaerobic Digestion, Composting, Food Recovery, International, Personal | Comments closed

NPR Spotlights Food Donation

NPR’s All Things Considered ran a fabulous feature on food donation last night, A Squash’s Journey (Sort of sounds like a kids book, no?)

The story focuses on Walmart’s impressive food donation program. Specifically, it traces the, yes, journey of a squash and an ear of corn from the retail shelf to food bank recipients’ mouths. It’s a neat piece and well worth a listen.

Equally important, there’s a jaunty graphic illustrating the process of getting food from Walmart to food banks to those in need. See–food recovery is fun!

Anyway, I had a few thoughts on Walmart:

  • $2 billion of donated food by 2015 is a huge amount! Kudos to Walmart. But let’s not forget that Walmart is a huge chain and, essentially, they’re doing what they should be doing.
  • That said, most supermarkets donate food. No other retailer has made such a chain-wide commitment to donating all kinds of edible, unsellable food. Kudos again for that.
  • Also, no other retailer has sought or accepted such (deserved) publicity for helping feed those in need with food that otherwise would have been tossed.
  • Hopefully this will prompt more stores to donate all of their foods–including the really perishable stuff–and to seek or accept whatever publicity they can get.

A few other thoughts on the story itself:

  • The haul from one store: 102 lbs of meat, 330 lbs of produce. Wow. Big stores, lots of fodder for donation.
  • The segment highlighted two major waste inducers: sell-by dates and how appearance trumps taste:

“There’s nothing wrong with the corn itself,” Bowman says. “When you pull back the husk, the corn inside is still beautiful, but because the outside’s a little dry, we’ll be pulling this.”

  • Awesome corn-shucking audio at about the 3-minute mark (as the employee utters the above)
  • I like how the piece ended with the cycle continuing. Every day we set about wasting and (hopefully) recovering food.

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One final note: This Saturday, NPR’s Weekend Edition will run another piece on food waste. NPR’s Pam Fessler interviewed me for this one, so I should be in there…

June 24, 2011 | Posted in Food Recovery, Personal, Supermarket | Comments closed

Portlandia: the saga continues

While you’ve surely seen this recent “waste stream” story out of Portland, there’s another one worth noting. In short, Rose City residents may soon face this choice: curbside composting or weekly trash collection?

In a survey, composting pilot program participants balked at having their monthly garbage bill increase $5 to fund larger garbage cans. Makes sense, as diverting food from your waste stream lessens its volume. Therefore, the same old bin would likely work for bi-weekly collection.

Yet, Portlanders’ reluctance to pay more might lead to every-other-week garbage collection to fund the composting program. So the objectors would basically get their way–paying the same amount for composting with bi-weekly trash collection.

Confused? Me, too.

Anyway–the bottom line is that Portland is close to implementing citywide curbside composting and is now figuring out exactly how to do so. Stay tuned…

June 22, 2011 | Posted in Composting | Comments closed

Music for a Good Dumpster Dive

If you could use a little pick-me-up this morning or some inspiration for hitting the Dumpsters, you could do worse than the Black Lips’ Dumpster Dive. Perhaps fittingly, it’s the last track on their MySpace site and their album…

I ain’t seen some good trash since I…since I don’t know when…

While I can’t make out any specific references to taking food from Dumpsters, edible booty is a given, right?

Anyone know of any other songs about Dumpster diving or food waste?

June 20, 2011 | Posted in Freegan, History and Culture | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

The Huff Post weighed in on how individuals should handle food waste. Composting it is!

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Nice to see a new-ish composting facility taking root in upstate New York. Almost better–the headline: Dirt, Cheap.

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Here’s some fairly UK-centric tips on how to use up expiring food, courtesy of Love Food Hate Waste’s use-it-up guru.

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Waste Not Want Not, a Maui tree fruit gleaning group, just got a nice grant to help them spread the tropical bounty.

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And finally, Mint.com interviewed some dude to get into the cost of food waste.

June 17, 2011 | Posted in Composting, Food Recovery, Friday Buffet, Restaurant | Comments closed

Batali Beckons

Two quick personal notes today:

Last year, I was on a panel with a mover and shaker in the Mario Batali empire. After kicking around the idea for a while, I can now say that this July I’ll be giving a few talks to the staff at Mario’s restaurants in L.A. and Las Vegas.

I’m excited about the chance to discuss food waste with some of America’s finest restaurant chefs and servers. And if all goes well, there will be a New York appearance in the fall, too.

Speaking of autumn, the paper back version of American Wasteland will be out on September 1. We’ve been working on the new cover and it will definitely be different from the previous one! But it’s neat. Plus, there’s a new appendix with many money- and waste-saving tips. So stay tuned…

June 15, 2011 | Posted in Personal | Comments closed

Dead Food

I’ve never heard the term ‘dead food.’ But, as used in this article from the Kansas City Star, it’s a catchy, appropriate description of food not used.

The article describes an urban, local composting facility that will soon begin accepting others’ household food waste. That’s encouraging, as permitting is often the hardest part to creating a composting operation.

The piece also does a service by describing household food waste as “the next frontier” of recycling. I couldn’t agree more:

Much of that organic material is lost as a resource, Heryer says. Instead of creating rich soil for growing things, it becomes a burden on water and sewer systems and landfills.

June 13, 2011 | Posted in Composting | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Here’s a Change.org petition from my pal Jeremy Seifert and the guys behind Dive! to get Trader Joe’s to stop wasting food.

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Here are some tips for using leftover food, all the way from down under (NZ).

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Staying in New Zealand, the government just honored a company diverting food waste to animal feed.

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Bycatch, trash fish–whatever you call it, why not eat it?

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Sometimes a little guilt–i.e. a public showing of your waste bin–can go a long way (As The Frugal Girl knows…).

June 10, 2011 | Posted in Friday Buffet, International, Supermarket | Comments closed

Why Waste Matters: Water

One of the real problems with wasting food is that we also squander the embedded resources. Mainly, oil and water (and I have found a way to mix the two here).

While I usually focus on oil, water is increasingly coming to the fore. To wit, this fascinating Dutch study that tallies foods’ water footprint. In addition to finding the water footprint of a city or nation, the study also calculates it for individual foods.

On page 54 of the study, we learn that chocolate, with 24,000 liters of water needed per kg, is among the worst offenders. We also get further evidence for eating chicken or pork instead of beef, and for fruits and vegetables instead of any meat.

Lest this idea prompts green fatigue (‘What other footprints do I need to worry about??’), here’s some free advice: Have a beer–only 75 litres per 250 ml glass! Or some water…

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Note: This Guardian piece prompted today’s post. And don’t forget to check out this UK report, which found that the water embedded in the food Britons throw away equals 6% of total UK water needs.

June 8, 2011 | Posted in Energy, Environment, International | Comments closed

Monday Buffet

If you’re in the mood for some startling food waste stats on a Monday morning, look no further than this piece gleaning some shockers from the recent FAO report.

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And here’s a followup from that same FAO world waste study–a report on post-harvest losses in sub-Saharan Africa.

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MSNBC weighed in with this piece on how ‘use-by’ dates prompt waste. Not shocking, but it contained this particularly useful passage:

There’s no magical threshold after which a certain food harvested on a certain date suddenly goes bad, Hurd said. “All food has bacteria in it all the time. As that bacteria grows, there’s a continuum along which food becomes more harmful.”

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An Oregon school slashed the amount of food it sends to the landfill by adopting–wait for it–a pig!

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During lunch with Jodi Bart, the woman behind the Tasty Touring blog, I tested out a new acronym to help folks trim their waste. Let me know what you think…

June 6, 2011 | Posted in Household, International, School | Comments closed