Tag: US Food waste

Fighting Food Waste, One Sector at a Time

Posted on by robbie

America is one of the largest offenders of food waste in the world, according to a recent survey. Every year, roughly 1.3 billion tons of food is thrown out worldwide, a considerable problem given that agriculture contributes about 22 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions and 12.7 million people go hungry in America alone. Entrepreneurs across several sectors have created ways to repurpose food. Their efforts are admirable and economical, but the biggest difference will be if you make food waste reduction a daily habit.

Recovered food from the University of Denver Food Recovery Network chapter.

On College Campuses

On average, a student who lives in university housing throws out 141 pounds of food per year. Multiply that by the number of residential colleges around the country, and it becomes a huge problem, says Regina Northouse, executive director for the Food Recovery Network, the only nonprofit dealing specifically with campus food waste.
WATCH: How Much Food Could Be Rescued If College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?
Northouse’s group reduces waste by enlisting the help of student volunteers at 226 universities. This manpower shuttles still-edible food from dining halls that would otherwise be thrown out to local nonprofits fighting hunger. Northouse estimates that since 2011, Food Recovery Network has fed 150,000 food-insecure people.

Through the box-subscription company Hungry Harvest, farmers sell “ugly food” to consumers instead of tossing the unsightly produce out.

On Farms

If a carrot isn’t quite orange enough, odds are it’ll be tossed. Blemishes and unattractive produce make up nearly 40 percent of discarded food, according to a 2012 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Though some unused fruits and veggies can be sent to food manufacturers, farmers lose profits from about a quarter of their crops because of cosmetic imperfections. To put money back into their pockets, box subscriptions services, such as Hungry Harvest, have found their way into the ugly food market.
“We started out with 10 customers at a stand,” says Stacy Carroll, director of partnerships for Hungry Harvest. “We now have thousands of customers every week buying thousands of pounds of food that would, in the past, have been thrown away.”
Roughly 10,000 subscribers along the East Coast receive weekly boxes of recovered produce from the Baltimore-based company (which was started by the founders of Food Recovery Network). In addition, food insecure families who use SNAP benefits can purchase boxes at 10 Hungry Harvest sites. All in all, the organization redistributes between 60,000 and 80,000 pounds of food through its subscription service each week.

MealConnect provides a platform for retailers to redistribute unsold produce to those in need.

At Food Retailers

For merchants, food wasted is also money wasted. Across the U.S., the cost of tossing food runs upward of $165 billion annually.
MealConnect, a tech platform launched in April by Feeding America (a nationwide network of food banks), allows retailers to post surplus meals and unused produce on its app, which then notifies local food banks workers to pick it up and redistribute it to those in need. The company has recovered 333 million pounds of food by working with large retailers like Walmart and Starbucks. MealConnect also allows merchants to recoup some of their outlays (via tax deductions).

Chef Dan Barber’s wastED pop-ups challenged chefs to create innovate dishes using produce that otherwise would have been thrown out.

In Restaurants

In 2015, the aptly named food popup wastED found itself in the heart of a media frenzy because of what was on the menu: trashed food. 
Since then, a handful of other restaurants in urban areas across the world have used recovered produce in their meals.
“We’re offering our cooks the opportunity to be creative and come up with menus instead,” says Brooklyn, N.Y., chef Przemek Adolf, owner of Saucy By Nature, which uses leftovers from previous catering events to create daily lunch and dinner specials.

The USDA’s FoodKeeper app educates consumers on how to extend the shelf life of stored foods.

In Your Own Kitchen

Individual families throw away nearly $1,600 worth of food per year, according to the EPA, which has spurred the federal government to step in and help.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture created the app FoodKeeper, which informs consumers on how long an apple can last in the fridge, for example, and proper food storage techniques to extend shelf life. It also sends out reminder alerts to use up food that’s in danger of spoiling. The desired outcome? People changing their behaviors, ultimately buying less and consuming what they do purchase.
 

The Surprising Story Behind One School’s Healthy Lunch Program, The Best Way to Reach Your Reps and More

Posted on by robbie

 
Revenge of the Lunch Lady, The Huffington Post Highline
In a country where cheap mass-produced food is king and pizza counts as a vegetable, healthy lunches for kids can be hard to come by. But a recent revamp of school fare in Huntington, W.V., previously designated as the nation’s unhealthiest city, provides a hopeful model. There, an enterprising employee managed to implement a healthy lunch program, starring locally grown produce, while maintaining the district’s minuscule $1.50-per-meal budget.
Getting a Busy Signal When You Call Congress? Here’s How to Get Through, The Christian Science Monitor
Since President Trump’s inauguration last month, there’s been a surge in citizens reaching out to Congress, but not all forms of communication are equally effective. If you really want your voice heard, say experts, try meeting with your representative in person, writing a personal letter and focusing on policy rather than cabinet picks.
The Compost King of New York, The New York Times
New York City alone generates 1 million tons of organic waste per year, but a new plant on Long Island will process this waste into both fertilizer and clean energy, generating significant returns. This new large-scale industrial waste processing is both more environmentally friendly and more profitable than traditional composting, and could revolutionize American energy.
Continue reading “The Surprising Story Behind One School’s Healthy Lunch Program, The Best Way to Reach Your Reps and More”

6 High-Tech Innovations That Could Solve Our Food-Waste Woes

Posted on by robbie

Americans can be a wasteful bunch. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimates that our country threw away 38 million tons of food, the equivalent of every person in the country junking two-thirds of a pound every day. We dumped milk that had spoiled, vegetables that had turned brown and hamburger patties we were too full to eat. Not only did this excess cost us a collective $161 billion, it caused unnecessary environmental strain. Food waste, after all, is the most common material in landfills and incinerators, constituting 21.6 percent of all solid waste, according to the U.S.D.A. To fix the problem, there are some easy strategies each household should adopt (hint: buy less, freeze more, compost). But there are also some high-tech innovations that could revamp the entire food supply. Below, the most promising efforts at reducing waste, from the time food is first harvested all the way to its final destination in a Dumpster.

1. Diverting Unwanted Food

Because of the government’s health and safety regulations, supply counts or simply cosmetic issues, a warehouse manager might reject a food shipment before it even makes it to the retail stand. The app Food Cowboy redirects this ugly or unwanted surplus to food banks. A truck driver simply programs her route into the mobile app, along with what’s on offer, like a pallet of bruised bananas or knobby carrots. By the time she’s ready to hit the road, the driver might receive a message from a charity who will meet her at a rest stop to take the produce. The soup kitchen gets their week’s supply of produce, and the distributor can take a tax deduction for the donation: a win-win.

Recipients at a food bank in New York City pack up their groceries.

2. Rethinking Plastic Packaging

Beyond the tons of food that Americans discard, there’s also the problem of all the packaging in which it’s wrapped: the egg cartons, salsa jars and snack wrappers, not to mention shopping bags. Scientists at the U.S.D.A. are trying to replace the ubiquitous plastic in grocery aisles with a mixture of casein, an edible milk protein, and pectin, a citrus extract often used to thicken jams. As long as it’s kept dry, the biodegradable film is actually 250 times better than plastic at blocking oxygen, which helps prevent food from going stale. And, because it’s edible, a consumer could plunk the whole package into water for an extra protein boost. “Everything is in smaller and smaller packaging, which is great for grabbing for lunch [or] for school, but then it generates so much waste,” Laetitia Bonnaillie, a U.S.D.A. researcher who co-led the research, tells Bloomberg. “Edible packaging can be great for that.”

3. Looking Beyond the Sell-By Date

We tend to throw out massive quantities of food because it spoils before we can eat it. Or, more accurately, because we worry that it has. Often, though, food is perfectly safe to eat after the sell-by date, but a home cook won’t want to take the risk of poisoning his family. The FoodKeeper App, a collaboration by the U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and Cornell University, provides guidelines online about whether an ingredient has spoiled and how long it can be kept in a pantry, refrigerator or freezer. So far, the database contains over 400 different food and beverage items.

If that’s not technical enough to determine whether food’s still safe to eat, M.I.T. scientists have another device: chemically actuated resonant devices (or more simply, CARDs), which can tell if food has gone bad by the gases it releases. “The beauty of these sensors is that they are really cheap. You put them up, they sit there, and then you come around and read them [with a smartphone]. There’s no wiring involved. There’s no power,” says Timothy Swager, the chemistry professor whose lab built gas-detecting sensors. Pretty soon, this “smart packaging” could do a more reliable job than the old trick of taking a whiff.

Many Americans toss out produce because it’s browning or otherwise looks unsavory, even when it’s still safe to eat.

4. Bypassing the Landfill

Only 5.1 percent of the food Americans currently trash is diverted; the rest ends up in the dump. Over time, this refuse releases clouds of pollutants into the atmosphere: either smoky emissions as it burns in an incinerator or methane, a gas that’s 28 times more dangerous for global warming than carbon dioxide, as it decomposes in a landfill. To reduce the burden on dumps, a device known as the Eco-Safe Digester, produced by BioHiTech for commercial kitchens like The Cheesecake Factory and those inside Marriott hotels, can divert up to 2,500 pounds of waste elsewhere daily. Liquefied by hungry microorganisms, a sloshing smoothie of leftovers goes down the drain, reducing the burden on dumps. That is, as long as the municipal sewers can handle the extra wastewater.

5. Cutting Back in Commercial Kitchens

As chefs rush to meet diners’ demands, some waste is expected. For many restaurants and dining halls, the thinking goes that it’s better to have a surplus of entrées ready than to run out halfway through dinner. But what if these establishments are consistently overdoing it? LeanPath, an Oregon-based software company, analyzes what’s being trashed in commercial kitchens and creates actionable steps for managers, cooks and servers to reduce waste. “Our business is about culture and shaping behavior,” Andrew Shakman, the co-founder, tells Bloomberg. “It’s not rocket science to figure out how to make less mashed potatoes. It is hard to identify that it’s mashed potatoes [that are overproduced] and to change behavior.” After staff has inputted a night’s worth of waste, the algorithm might recommend eliminating the rhubarb no one ever orders, peeling less skin off the potatoes or adding one less bread roll in the basket. By following its advice, LeanPath estimates it can save up to 6 percent of a kitchen’s food costs.

Food scraps from The Slanted Door restaurant in San Francisco make their way to the compost bin.

6. Designing a Smarter Dumpster

Of course, some food will always make its way to the rubbish heap. And when it does, we might as well have garbage trucks pick it up in the most efficient way possible. Compology, a San Francisco waste-management startup, installs sensors on dumpsters to gauge volume. As the bins fill to capacity, an algorithm plans drivers’ most efficient route, eliminating the stop-and-go emissions from weekly garbage collection. The more infrequent pickups can also save haulers tons of cash, up to 40 percent of collection costs, according to the co-founders’ reports from Santa Cruz, Calif., where sensors already been installed.
Continue reading “6 High-Tech Innovations That Could Solve Our Food-Waste Woes”

10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016

Posted on by robbie

The most contentious presidential election in modern history offered Americans abundant reasons to shut off the news. But if they looked past the front page’s daily jaw-droppers, our countrymen would see that there’s plenty of inspiring work being done. At NationSwell, we strive to find the nonprofit directors, the social entrepreneurs and the government officials testing new ways to solve America’s most intractable problems. In our reporting this year, we’ve found there’s no shortage of good being done. Here’s a look at our favorite solutions from 2016.

This Woman Has Collected 40,000 Feminine Products to Boost the Self-Esteem of Homeless Women
Already struggling to afford basic necessities, homeless women often forgo bras and menstrual hygiene products. Dana Marlowe, a mother of two in the Washington, D.C., area, restored these ladies’ dignity by distributing over 40,000 feminine products to the homeless before NationSwell met her in February. Since then, her organization Support the Girls has given out 212,000 more.
Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
Joseph McGill, a Civil War re-enactor and history consultant for Charleston’s Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina, believes we must not forget the history of slavery and its lasting impact to date. To remind us, he’s slept overnight in 80 dilapidated cabins — sometimes bringing along groups of people interested in the experience — that once held the enslaved.

This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline
Abandoned by an abusive dad and a mentally ill mom, Pamela Bolnick was placed into foster care at 6 years old. For a time, the system worked — that is, until she “aged out” of it. Bolnick sought help from First Place for Youth, an East Bay nonprofit that provides security deposits for emancipated children to transition into stable housing.

Would Your Opinions of Criminals Change if One Cooked and Served You Dinner?
Café Momentum, one of Dallas’s most popular restaurants, is staffed by formerly incarcerated young men without prior culinary experience. Owner Chad Houser says the kitchen jobs have almost entirely eliminated recidivism among his restaurant’s ranks.

This Proven Method Is How You Prevent Sexual Assault on College Campuses
Nearly three decades before Rolling Stone published its incendiary (and factually inaccurate) description of sexual assault at the University of Virginia, a gang rape occurred at the University of New Hampshire in 1987. Choosing the right ways to respond to the crisis, the public college has since become the undisputed leader in ending sex crimes on campus.

This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown
Once a commercial fisherman, Bren Smith now employs a more sustainable way to draw food from the ocean. Underwater, near Thimble Island, Conn., he’s grown a vertical farm, layered with kelp, mussels, scallops and oysters.

This Former Inmate Fights for Others’ Freedom from Life Sentences
Jason Hernandez was never supposed to leave prison. At age 21, a federal judge sentenced him to life for selling crack cocaine in McKinney, Texas — Hernandez’s first criminal offense. After President Obama granted him clemency in 2013, he’s advocated on behalf of those still behind bars for first-time, nonviolent drug offenses.

Eliminating Food Waste, One Sandwich (and App) at a Time
In 2012, Raj Karmani, a Pakistani immigrant studying computer science at the University of Illinois, built an app to redistribute leftover food to local nonprofits. So far, the nonprofit Zero Percent has delivered 1 million meals from restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets to Chicago’s needy. In recognition of his work, Karmani was awarded a $10,000 grant as part of NationSwell’s and Comcast NBCUniversal’s AllStars program.

Baltimore Explores a Bold Solution to Fight Heroin Addiction
Last year, someone in Baltimore died from an overdose every day: 393 in total, more than the number killed by guns. Dr. Leana Wen, the city’s tireless public health commissioner, issued a blanket prescription for naloxone, which can reverse overdoses, to every citizen — the first step in her ambitious plan to wean 20,000 residents off heroin.

How a Fake Ad Campaign Led to the Real-Life Launch of a Massive Infrastructure Project
Up until 1974, a streetcar made daily trips from El Paso, Texas, across the Mexican border to Ciudad Juárez. Recently, a public art project depicting fake ads for the trolley inspired locals to call for the line’s comeback, and the artist behind the poster campaign now sits on the city council.

Continue reading “10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016”

Why This Man is Dumpster Diving for His Meals

Posted on by robbie

Did you know that about 40 percent of the food in this country is completely wasted to the tune of $165 billion a year? After hearing that, does it make you wonder why 1 in 6 Americans don’t have enough money to put food on their table? Or why 46.2 million individuals rely on food stamps? Where does all this food even go?
The answers are multi-faceted (and you can read why here). But one reason why a mountain of waste piles up every day is because grocery stores dump perfectly edible food.
Environmental activist Rob Greenfield is trying to bring awareness to this troubling practice by biking across the country and solely eating out of the dumpsters of supermarkets and convenience stores. With a solar generator, his bamboo bike and $2,000 in cash that he earned through his marketing company, the 28-year-old started peddling from San Diego on June 2 and hopes to reach New York City by Sept. 26.
Trust us, even though he’s eating “trash,” the pickings aren’t slim. “The most surprising thing is the quantity of food I find,” Greenfield tells NationSwell, during a stopover in northern Baltimore. “Time and time again, it’s full to the brim of perfectly good bread, fruits and vegetables. [It’s food like] packaged rice and oatmeal — things that never go bad and don’t get people sick.” Recently at a local dumpster, he found unopened Sunchips and Oreo cookies along with meat that was still cold, including chicken breast and steak. He even found a pack of vitamin supplement Emergen-C with a Feb. 2015 expiration date.
He also shares an experience at a CVS drugstore in Mays Chapel where he found boxes of feminine pads, toothpaste and diapers. “That stuff women’s shelters could use,” he says. “There is no excuse to throw away diapers.” After confronting the drugstore chain on Twitter, the store responded, “We have a product donation policy that our stores follow for unsold products that are being removed from our stores,” adding, “Occasionally there are products that seem ‘perfectly good’ but are in a condition that wouldn’t allow them to be donated.”
MORE: How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?
Following that exchange, Greenfield noted that the date of expiration for the products wasn’t for months.
It’s time this country gets smarter about food — and an easy way to do so is to start with where we shop. “The purpose of all of this is to motivate and encourage grocery stores to stop dumping food and start donating it [to] food rescue programs and food banks that exist already across America,” Greenfield writes on his blog. “There is a huge misconception among many people that grocery stores are either not allowed to donate excess food or would be liable for lawsuit but the law is actually on their side.”
Greenfield himself lives an extremely modest lifestyle. His 4,700-mile solo trip, dubbed “Off the Grid Across America,” is removed from all our modern comforts, including electricity and showers. That $2,000 he initially started out with dwindled down to $420, which he ended up donating to charity. (“I found that when you don’t have money you’re forced to be part of your community and you’re a problem solver and not a consumer,” he says) As for where he sleeps, Greenfield crashes at a friend’s home or sets up camp at a public park, the desert or the woods.
Greenfield has stayed remarkably positive throughout his journey, especially when he finds that so many people he’s met along the way support his mission: “It’s mind-blowing how many people care. No one thinks food should be in the dumpster in the first place.”
“It’s going to take a lot of changes to completely solve this, but definitely the most important is that everyone in America knows the problem,” he adds. “Awareness comes first.”
So how else can we help Greenfield’s cause? “Take out your smartphones, walk behind your grocery store, and open up the Dumpster,” he tells TakePart. “If you see food inside, take a picture or video and tweet it at the store, telling them to #DonateNotDump.” Greenfield also suggests asking store managers if they’re donating unwanted edible food to shelters or food banks (such as Feeding America).
Even if we don’t have the stomach to eat food out of a dumpster like Rob Greenfield, together we can help make sure this food doesn’t get there in the first place.
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DON’T MISS: NYC’s Solution for Food Waste Should Happen in Schools Everywhere

The State That Has Made It Illegal to Throw Away Unwanted Food

Posted on by robbie

We’ve mentioned that food waste is an expensive, environmental nightmare. Americans waste 40 percent of the food that’s produced each year to the tune of $165 billion.
One state has figured out a way to make this stop — by making it a crime.
Starting in October, Massachusetts’s biggest food wasters will no longer be able to send their unwanted food to the landfills, NPR reports. The ban, recently finalized by Gov. Deval Patrick, targets places that produce more than a ton of organic food waste per week, such as universities, hotels, grocery stores, sporting and entertainment venues and other manufacturers.
Instead of simply dumping leftovers, they have the choice to donate the usable food or to send the unwanted food to composting facilities, to plants that can turn scraps into biogas or to farms to use as livestock feed.
MORE: A Few Supplies From the Hardware Store Can Turn Leftovers Into Clean Fuel
NPR notes that it’s the “most ambitious commercial food waste ban in the U.S.”
David Cash, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, described to NPR all the benefits of the ban — including more food for the hungry, money saved on waste disposal, fewer landfills and less greenhouse gases, more green energy and green energy jobs and even fertilizer.
“This is not just a win-win situation,” Cash said. “It’s a win-win-win-win-win-win-win. Seven wins.”
The ban isn’t as draconian as it sounds. Initially announced in 2012, the 1,700 producers that this ban affects have already been preparing and reaping the benefits. Supermarkets, for example, found that they can save $10,000 to $20,000 annually per store by diverting food from the landfills.
The ban — which may eventually extend to smaller businesses and homes — is part of the state’s ambitious goal to reduce its waste stream by 80 percent by 2050. Other states such as Vermont and Connecticut also have similar rules, but nothing as aggressive as Massachusetts’s.
With any luck, the rest of the country will soon catch on, too.
DON’T MISS: How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?

This Video Shows Precisely How Much Food We Waste and Why We Do it

Posted on by robbie

It goes without saying that Americans throw away a lot of food. In fact, roughly 40 percent of the food in this country is completely wasted.
In an effort to drive home this startling fact, YouTube channel MinuteEarth teamed up with families, farmers and YouTube stars to create this video below that shows precisely how much food is wasted in the United States.
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So why do we waste so much food? It’s not just because we hate to eat leftovers. As the video points out, due to industrialized farming practices, food is sometimes left in fields to die because it costs more to harvest than what it’s actually worth. Other times, food is accidentally damaged, spilled or contaminated. And when food gets sent off for packaging and distribution, sometimes it’s rejected solely because it’s not pretty enough — like when a perfectly edible banana is tossed away because it has a few bruises.
It’s also because food in America is actually really cheap compared to the rest of the world. “Part of the problem is that on average, I spend a smaller fraction of my household budget on [food] than in any other country or any other time in history,” says YouTube star CGP Grey. “My spending is spread out over days or weeks so I don’t notice the cost of wasting [food]. But my lack of noticing adds up.”
MORE: This Sandwich Shop’s Ridiculously Small Amount of Waste Will Shock You
Across the country, millions of people (about 1 in 6) do not have enough money for a meal. Imagine how many people would no longer go hungry if we were smarter about uneaten food. At a particularly poignant moment in the video, a man sitting behind a table full of cereal, milk, fruits and vegetables casually shoves half of the food off. “I throw away almost half of you,” he says, “Enough calories to feed 150 million people.”
Wasted food also uses up an incredible amount of natural resources. In the video’s accompanying issue brief, authors Alexander H. Reich and Jonathan A. Foley from the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota write, “Tremendous resources are used to produce uneaten food in the U.S.: 30% of fertilizer, 31% of cropland, 25% of total freshwater consumption, and 2% of total energy consumption.”
And if that didn’t already leave a bad taste in your mouth, as NationSwell previously mentioned, Americans waste 36 million tons of food annually according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which leads to $165 billion in wasted costs.
We must be smarter about the way we eat, and there are many things we can do from eating leftovers and buying food we will actually eat, to food recovery programs. Maybe then, everyone on the planet will know what it’s like to have enough food.
ALSO: New “Mobsters” Are Feeding the Hungry and Cutting Food Waste