The Homefront

I recently revisited a study on one community’s food waste. More specifically, an Analysis of a Community Food Waste Stream (The full study isn’t available for free, unfortunately).

The study tallies the food wasted in upstate New York’s Tompkins County. The county seems fairly representative, as the lead author Mary Griffin told me by email. It has a decent mix of rural and urban, agricultural and industrial (including food production).

Most interesting, to me, is the breakdown of waste down by the source. This is extremely useful, as it’s one of the only sources I know of that gives a sense of how wasteful each part of the food chain really is.

The part that really stands out is this:

…60% of food waste was generated by consumers

But what exactly does that mean? In Griffin’s study, the consumer segment includes homes, schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes. But doing a little arithmetic (always a dangerous thing for yours truly), I deduced that homes produce 40% of the county’s food waste.

On the one hand–Damn, that’s a lot!!

On the other hand, if you ever wanted to feel empowered, that’s a powerful statistic.

It’s in our hands. You and I can reduce the amount of food waste our cities, counties and states produce simply by keeping a better eye on our own cupboards and fridges.

September 27, 2010 | Posted in Household, Stats | Comments closed

Nobody Beats the Giz

I had a guest post on Gizmodo today and thought you should know. It was a neat chance to reach a different audience, and to be techy and punchy.

It was also a nice opportunity to enjoy some awesome Lego-inspired artwork.

The post prompted some fun comments, for sure (you should really scroll down to take a gander). But the majority of responses–aside from a few–indicate that wasted food really irks most people. Amen.

(Image courtesy of Gizmodo. Lego art by powerpig )

September 24, 2010 | Posted in General | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Jennifer Rubbel, America’s favorite “vegetable butcher,” also makes art that calls attention to food waste. Or is it just a waste? Depends how you look at it. Here’s her take:

People sometimes look at what I do and think about decadence and waste. They see 150 roasted rabbits in a pile and think it’s obscene. But the level of waste in my projects is no greater — and in many cases, much less — than the waste you’d find at the equivalent catered event.

— —

The Guardian reports that UK retailers cut their waste in half. And grocers have done a bang-up job cutting food waste.

— —

A Hartford health store owner has created a community kitchen from overstocks, donated produce from farmers and donated food from local organizations.

— —

The Financial Times comes through with a nice infographic presentation on UK waste. If only they could reproduce that pink newspaper look online.

— —

Close to (my) home, Chapel Hill is making noise about recycling food waste. Not a moment too soon!

— —

Finally, I enjoyed this heartfelt editorial from the UMass paper, which reminded me how few causes I had in college. I did have plenty of fun, though.

September 24, 2010 | Posted in Friday Buffet, Hunger, International | Comments closed

Studying School Food Waste

Many folks, rightly so, are concerned about the quality of food that our public schools serve. A somewhat related problem is the amount of food (think gooey vegetables or rubbery fried fish) that’s thrown out.

To help understand exactly what schools discard, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency just published a major study on the topic.

Volunteers in Minnesota sorted through six schools’ garbage and recycling–two each at the elementary, middle and high school levels–sorting items into 19 categories. The result of those findings is “Digging Deep Through School Trash.”

While the study isn’t on food waste, specifically, there’s plenty of insight on the topic. “Digging” found that food was the single largest material generated by schools, amounting to 24 percent of the total waste generated. That’s about double the percentage in the (regular) municipal solid waste stream!

Overall, almost 80 percent of the school waste could be diverted from landfill. So in addition to working on reducing school waste–food and otherwise–it’s vital that schools have both recycling and composting programs. Especially in light of the finding that 47 percent of schools waste could be composted.

September 22, 2010 | Posted in School | Comments closed

Monday Mold Reminder

Just because your food has a little mold on it doesn’t mean you have to throw it away. With many, but not all foods, a little scraping, spooning, facing or cutting will remove the problem.

As a general rule, the softer an item, the easier it is for mold to spread. So tread lighter with cottage cheese than with romano. In either case, you should be generous in your trimming and employ a bit of common sense afterwards. As always, sight and smell (and taste) should guide your decision on whether to keep or toss the item.

It’s nice to be reminded of this topic every once in a while. I was prodded on the topic recently when a reader (who opted to remain anonymous) sent in “before” and “after” pictures from a bit of mold removal he did with a butter-ish spread.

He was thinking of returning the item to the store, but held off after realizing that the retailer would just  throw away the tub even thought the majority of it was perfectly fine. Instead, he scraped:

Looks good!

September 20, 2010 | Posted in Food Safety, Household | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Should we freeze cheese? The Kitchn is glad we asked.

— —

The Independent, on Lady Gaga’s dress sewed from cuts of meat:

Food waste is another dimension to the media furore surrounding her outfit, although so far nobody has publicly condemned the singer for “A terrible waste of prime steak.”

OK, I’ll say it: Lady Gaga’s dress was a waste of meat. And a few other things.

— —

In case you doubted Iowa City’s composting street cred (my hand is raised), doubt no more. The city is expanding its two-decades-old household collection service to multi-family units.

— —

U. Wisconsin-Oshkosh held a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday for the nation’s first commercial-scale dry fermentation anaerobic biodigester. This indoor facility will provide about 10 percent of the campus’ energy needs!

— —

The impressive NYU student food recovery group Two Birds, One Stone is ramping up operations as the school year gets into full swing. They’re also looking for more volunteers.

— —

The final toll from the New Zealand earthquake included 40,000 tonnes of food.

September 17, 2010 | Posted in College, Composting, Energy, General, Household | Comments closed

Reconsidering Recalls

Food recalls are the worst. First, they only occur when food-borne illnesses are causing sickness and sometimes death. Second, the mechanism of recalling vast amounts of food means millions of pounds of perfectly good food won’t be eaten.

Stephen Jannise of Distribution Software Advice recently wrote an interesting post dissecting this summer’s egg recall and pondering ways to avoid another such disaster. The post even included this handy, handsome infographic explaining exactly what happened:

Not surprisingly for someone writing for Software Advice, the post focuses on a potential technology-based solution. Essentially, the idea is whether or not food companies should install tracking software to be able to trace each box it ships.

While this would be expensive up-front, it would hopefully avoid unnecessary losses later. Once the outbreak’s origin is identified, this new tracking technology would hopefully prevent the ‘widely cast net’ recall method. What do you think–would this tracking be worth the trouble? And should the FDA require or help fund the technology??

One thought: I’ve seen eggs with the expiration date printed right on their shell. How much harder would it be to have the tracking number stamped on? Given the vagueness of “use-by” dates, that tracking info would probably be more useful.

Of course, free ranging hens would eliminate most all contamination concerns, as they’d be eating “food,” not “feed.” But we’re not likely to make a complete return to that system.

September 16, 2010 | Posted in Food Safety, Technology | Comments closed

Donning the Cape

Composting and renewable energy company Harvest Power has a cool feature going on its blog. The Boston-based company is highlighting SSO (source-separated organics) Superheroes who are finding innovative ways to handle food waste.

So far, they’ve profiled Atlanta’s Holly Elmore, founder and CEO of Elemental Impact, who responsible for setting up Zero Waste Zones in the Peach of a city. And King County’s Josh Marx, who was instrumental in establishing curbside composting in and around Seattle.

Best of all, Harvest wants to hear nominations for SSO Superheroes. So if you know of anyone in your area or elsewhere doing neat things in the area of composting or anaerobic digestion, let them know!

After all, who doesn’t want to wear a green cape and tights?? Well, at least the cape part…

September 14, 2010 | Posted in General | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

September is Hunger Action Month, courtesy of Feeding America. You can pledge to take action on hunger and help your local food bank win a truckload of food.

— —

Marin County (California) is set to go zero four percent waste.

— —

Speaking of zero waste, Mrs. Green over at My Zero Waste has been crushing it with her National Zero Waste Week. Here are 8 helpful tips for avoiding waste.

— —

As I mentioned on Wednesday, Sodexo is making reducing food waste a priority. Here’s the official press release. And it’s part of this larger initiative.

September 10, 2010 | Posted in College, Friday Buffet, Household, Hunger, Waste Stream | Comments closed

Sodexo Steps Up

Today I’m cross-posting on Sodexo’s A Better Tomorrow blog. The food service provider is taking a stand against food waste with their Stop Wasting Food campaign (StopWastingFood.org).

If you can, pass along the word about this campaign, via Twitter, Facebook or your social media venue of choice. It’d be really exciting to see it gain traction. And with that, here’s the guest post I added to the cause:

— —

I’ll admit it—I waste food. To my continual dismay, it happens. And if yours truly, a food waste fanatic with a forthcoming book on the subject, has food go bad in his fridge, imagine what happens nationwide — Or in your own home.

Looking at the entire food chain, a 2009 study found that 40 percent of all the food produced in America isn’t eaten. And that might be an underestimate.

‘So what?’ I can almost hear the questions pinging through your head. ‘What’s the big deal? Why should I care?’ Well, here are four reasons why food waste matters:

  • Environment. Food sent to the landfill doesn’t harmlessly biodegrade. When it rots anaerobically (without air), organics emit the greenhouse gas methane. Bad news: methane has 23 times the heat-trapping power of CO2. Worse News: We keep sending more and more food to the landfill, as our rate of waste and population increase.
  • Ethics. More than 10 percent of Americans don’t get enough to eat. In light of that tragedy, there’s something unacceptable about taking way more than you’ll eat and then throwing out half of it. No religion or secular worldview that I’ve encountered condones wasting food.
  • Economics. The roughly 160 billion pounds of food America wastes represents a loss of $160 billion. And in today’s economy, there are plenty of schools, homeless shelters and food banks that are desperate for funding. Even on college campuses, the money saved from reduced waste can be used to purchase more organic and local food or to ensure board prices don’t rise.
  • Energy. The energy embedded in the food that we squander represents about 2 percent of total American energy consumption. That comes primarily from the fossil fuels used to plant, fertilize, harvest, and ship our foods. The processing and cooling of food, including household refrigerators, are major energy users, too.

We’re never going to eliminate food waste. But we can certainly create a whole lot less of it. For the above reasons, it’s worth trying.

September 8, 2010 | Posted in College | Comments closed