An estimated 50 million Americans suffer from food hunger while the average family in the U.S. wastes $1,500 worth of food annually. Without the help of more conscious consumers and better food practices, that disparity is likely to only grow bigger. But food brands and grocery stores have an opportunity to step in and help make a change, according to a new report from brand innovation firm BBMG.
While some cities like San Francisco are making composting compulsory to reduce the amount of landfill waste, it’s simply not enough.Forget training programs and reach for the controller. But BBMG found by making subtle changes in how food companies approach customers, they could help could alter how consumers are experiencing food and food waste.
The company predicts that reducing waste is possible through making smarter consumer choices and by tapping Generation X and Millennials — two generations who love to consume, but are conscious of the environmental and social values of products. The nation’s younger population can help shift food practices, but must first overcome tendencies to overbuy, a lack of time for shopping, misleading expiration dates and poor food storage, the report finds.
Which is why grocery stores can allay these concerns by providing a few simple nudges for its customers. One example is BagIQ, a startup that’s tailoring a consumer’s experience at the grocery store. The startup aggregates bought items to create a list of healthy recipes based on the recent purchases. Grocery stores can apply a similar model by emailing a customer recipe ideas after they leave the store or through creating meal-planning apps to help organize food.
Grocery stores can also make it easier to donate food to charity or create a game-like experience for shopping lists to help shoppers visualize what they’re buying. As for expiry dates, or “best by” labels, BBMG suggests simplifying language to “Eat me first” stickers to help people recognize food that may spoil, rather than going by often inaccurate dates.
Storing food properly is also a major issue. BBMG said consumers often admit to not understanding optimal storage to avoid food from spoiling sooner. Grocery stores can educate customers on strategic storing, including what should be washed before its stored, if fruits can go next to vegetables and what should be eaten first. An app that helps with meal planning can also help map out when to use fresh produce.
Finally, grocery stores can also improve on waste is by providing consumer rewards and incentives for how often they visit a store rather than how much they purchase. With a tendency to overbuy, incentivizing frequency rather than quantity teaches consumers that it’s not always best to buy in bulk.
While some of these suggestions may take some planning, most are simplistic ways for food brands to innovate the way we think about food. For the 50 million Americans who go hungry, that’s a step worth taking.
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Tag: Food Waste
Let’s Hope This Is the Next Big Food Trend
Thinking about your next meal? Forget kale or quinoa or any other trendy fare. Why not try “expired” or “ugly” food instead?
Modern Farmer has proclaimed that salvage grocery stores (where shoppers can find misshapen fruits and veggies, and food that’s past the sell-by dates for steep discounts) are “the next big thing in food.”
The reason why? For an increasingly eco-conscious America, salvage grocery stores don’t just mean savings for your pocketbook, they also help reduce the shocking amount of food that’s wasted in this country.
We’ve said it before: About 40 percent of perfectly edible food that’s produced in this country never makes it onto our plates. That’s 36 million tons of food wasted annually, to the tune of $165 billion, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s not to mention all the energy, carbon emissions and environmental destruction involved in farming and the food manufacturing process. To produce food that’s immediately landfill-bound is also incredibly senseless when 1 in 6 Americans are struggling with hunger.
Surprisingly, one reason why so much is wasted is due to confusion about sell-by dates. Many grocery stores (as well as individual Americans) throw out food that’s deemed bad simply because it’s past the date on the sticker. Dumpsters behind big grocery stores have been found “full to the brim” with fresh or packaged foods that are past these arbitrary dates but would never make anyone sick. Truth is, these labels don’t actually mean much. Even the U.S.D.A. says those dates refer to peak quality and are not a time that designates when it’s safe to consume the food.
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Additionally, Americans have gotten used to seeing fruits and vegetables that come without a single bump, bruise or bend. Produce that’s less-than-perfect gets tossed out before it enters anyone’s shopping cart.
But salvage groceries are places where unwanted foods and odd-shaped fruits and veggies can find its way to your fork. Modern Farmer writes that these stores sell just about anything you’d find at a conventional grocery store — from potato chips to organic wine — but for a much cheaper price because salvage grocers buy directly from manufacturers and aren’t as concerned with perfect-looking produce. You’ll also find holiday and seasonal foods, failed products, items with misspelled or misshapen labels and other grocery store castoffs.
Unfortunately, there’s no national database of salvage grocery stores, so you might have to search hard for one near you (if there is one at all). But for your wallet and for the environment, it’s definitely worth the effort.
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What This Couple Learned By Spending Six Months Dumpster Diving
If you asked husband and wife Grant Baldwin and Jen Rustmeyer what they were having for dinner, their answer would be whatever is lying around…literally.
For six months, the couple ate only “wasted” food — that which was discarded, considered “ugly” or incorrectly labelled — to demonstrate the food waste problem in America.
In a country where one in five children is food insecure, about 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. isn’t eaten — resulting in a loss of $165 billion, according to Good. That’s why the couple set out on the venture, which resulted in their documentary “Just Eat It.”
During the process, the couple was surprised to find out that individuals, not industry, are the major contributors to food waste. In the average household, about one quarter of the food bought isn’t eaten, and about 50 percent of all food waste can be traced to individuals whether through the disposal of uneaten groceries, uncooked food or unfinished meals at restaurants and at home.
So, what’s the main cause of this waste? For Baldwin and Rustmeyer, it all comes back to food date labeling. While these dates tend to be viewed as definitive, they’re actually guidelines for stock rotation and peak freshness, not expiration. In fact, an expiration date is only valid for a few products.
Other large sources of waste are restaurants and schools, where food is distributed in large amounts and rarely finished, and distribution. While some states, like California, have an overabundance of products in food banks, it can’t be efficiently and cost-effectively transported to states that don’t.
All hope isn’t lost, though, as Baldwin and Rustmeyer have simple waste-reducing steps to follow. First, trust your five senses, not the date label. Second, value everything you own. Third, save food in what Rustmeyer calls an “Eat Me First” drawer.
“That’s a bin in your fridge where you put things that need to be included in the next meal,” Rustmeyer tells Good.
So, before you throw out that food, take a break from reliance on the date label and put a little more trust in your senses.
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Want to Throw Food Away in This City? It’ll Cost You
There’s a new contender for greenest city in America. Seattle’s City Council unanimously passed a new policy that will fine businesses and residents for not composting.
Starting Jan. 1, 2015, all Seattle residents and commercial establishments must separate food waste and compostable paper for recycling — meaning these items can’t get sent to the landfills like regular garbage. With the new regulation, the city’s trash collectors can hand out tickets if they find a trash bin with more than 10 percent compostable waste. “After receiving two warnings, residents and businesses will be fined $50 for dumpsters and a more modest $1 for waste at single-family homes,” CNN reports.
Even though a $1 fine isn’t very much (for comparison’s sake, San Francisco fines its residents up to $100 for failing to compost), Seattle isn’t actually trying to make money off of trash violators. Rather, the city wants to stress to its residents the importance of recycling. As Tim Croll (Seattle Public Utilities’ solid-waste director) tells the Seattle Times, the city has collected less than $2,000 in fines since it outlawed recyclable items from the trash a whole nine years ago.
“The point isn’t to raise revenue,” Croll adds. “We care more about reminding people to separate their materials.”
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Seattle has a goal of recycling 60 percent of waste by 2015 and 70 percent by 2022. However, its recycling rate for 2013 was at 56 percent, which fell a little short of the city’s target, the Times reports. The new law should generate an additional 38,000 tons of compost material every year, hopefully putting the city back on track.
Food and paper waste is a huge, expensive problem for the whole of America. We’ve previously reported that more than any other material thrown away by Americans, paper has the biggest presence in landfills. According to the EPA, paper takes up the largest chuck of solid municipal solid waste at 27 percent. As for our food scraps, a staggering 40 percent of the food in this country is completely wasted, or about 36 million tons of food annually, setting us back $165 billion in wasted costs per year.
Seattle’s continued efforts reduce waste is something that other cities should aspire to.
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Why This Man is Dumpster Diving for His Meals
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.”
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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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6 Common Environmental Culprits That Need Regulation
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about California being the first state to ban plastic bags (even though Hawaii arguably deserves the title). This news is undoubtedly fantastic, but it’s really just a small victory in light of much larger environmental problems.
Adam Minter writes on Bloomberg View that the ban — now awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature — is much more symbolic than real: “Gestures such as these can be important in inspiring broader, more meaningful environmental reform. But they risk fueling a self-congratulatory complacency that distracts from more serious challenges.”
He’s got a point. As Minter says, the 3.4 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps thrown out in 2012 is just 10 percent of the 31.8 million tons of total plastics thrown away, or a mere 1.3 percent of the 251 million tons of solid waste generated annually.
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Plastic bags are just a start. Here are six other big, wasteful household items that deserve our attention, and more importantly, what can be done about them.
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This App Helps Reduce Food Waste
Americans waste up to 30 to 40 percent of food, an excess of up to $165 billion a year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Which is why a New York app developer is launching an app to help restaurants and grocery stores find customers who might pay for discounted food before it’s thrown away.
PareUp is an online platform that allows food vendors to list excess items at a reduced price, which is often food they’re unable to donate because of regulations or the items don’t meet the minimum bulk requirement for food banks or shelters.
“We want to change the cultural conversation around what it means to consume food and the life cycle of food,” co-founder Margaret Tung said. “Because we’re throwing out a lot more than needs to be.”
Tung, along with Jason Chen and Anuj Jhunjhunwala, created the app to both benefit retailers and consumers. Users can check in on available inventory each day and head to the store to purchase it. PareUp plans to take a small percentage of each transaction.
“A lot of people in food tech today are looking at production, consumption and distribution with all these delivery apps getting funding and attention like Grubhub,” Tung said. “We wanted to look at where people are not really spending that much energy … the next frontier to explore.”
Currently, the app is only available for food shoppers in New York City, but the startup is aiming to launch in Chicago, Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. as well. The company has also received inquiries from retailers in London, Sydney and Toronto, too.
But for now, the biggest hurdle facing PareUp is changing the way in which people think of leftover food, according to Tung. Food that otherwise is headed toward the dumpster is not exactly appetizing.
The company is also hoping to launch a version for food banks or shelters, bridging the gap between nonprofits and food retailers, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Though PareUp isn’t a silver bullet for food waste, it’s a step in the right direction to help retailers unload unused food and support nonprofit efforts.
“[We’re] just trying to pick up where they leave off,” said Tung said of food banks and shelters. “And even still the numbers are pretty huge. The market has enough room for everyone, at least right now.”
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The State That Has Made It Illegal to Throw Away Unwanted Food
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.
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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.
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NYC’s Solution for Food Waste Should Happen in Schools Everywhere
Will kids eat their fruits and vegetables simply because they’re told to?
Unfortunately not. So while there’s the good news that school lunches are healthier than ever under Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (which helps fight childhood obesity), the bad news is that even if the lunch lady piles the peas and carrots onto every tray (instead of French fries), picky eaters will just end up throwing them away.
We’ve mentioned before that 40 percent of food in this country gets thrown away (to the tune of $165 billion in wasted costs), and uneaten school food is naturally a part of this problem.
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To tackle this wasteful and expensive issue, many schools across the country are now utilizing a green solution to turn something unwanted into something valuable: Composting.
The New York Times reports that more than 230 schools in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island are taking part in New York City’s composting program that turns unwanted scraps into nutrient-rich soil.
It starts in the cafeteria, where kids sort their food into all the appropriate waste bins. The students at Public School 30 in Staten Island, for example, toss their trash (plastic bags, foam cups and wrappers) into containers for landfill garbage and recyclables (metal, glass, plastic and milk cartons), and put their food scraps and liquids in compost containers. The food is then picked up by city sanitation trucks and taken to a compost heaps Staten Island, upstate New York, or Delaware. From there, the waste decomposes into all-natural mulch that is then sold to farmers and landscape architects.
This plan works because not only are these students learning how to recycle and conserve food, but also because the whole process saves the city $10 to $50 per ton of garbage. Last year, it cost NYC $93 per ton to dump garbage in landfills.
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Based on the success of the composting program (it’s expected to reach all five of the Big Apple’s boroughs by this fall, with a larger goal to eventually expand to all 1,300-plus schools) it only seems obvious that more schools in the nation should start their own food waste initiatives. Already, school districts in Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago have their own similar composting programs.
As P.S. 30 assistant principal Joseph Napolitano told the Times, “[The food is] really being recycled whether they eat it or not; it’s not really a waste.”
Getting kids to eat healthy might be a food fight for the ages, but, hey, if we can’t teach them how to enjoy fruits and vegetables, at least they can learn how to dispose of them properly.
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This Video Shows Precisely How Much Food We Waste and Why We Do it
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.”
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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.
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