Your food waste is YOUR choice!

Many moons ago in a galaxy far, far away …. I taught at a New England Environmental / Outdoor school. Students between grades 4 and 8 would come on Monday and leave on Friday – all the while sleeping in church camp dormitories and eating in the large mess hall, and learning about ecology during the day outdoors in the elements. At every meal, we’d collect all the food waste that went back to the kitchen with a goal to reduce by 50% from Monday to Friday (a full day’s waste). We even had a homemade scale called the “Wast-o-meter” to measure it accurately (joke).

The point being that 1) a bunch of resources went into growing, transporting and preparing that food, and 2) other people without food would eat it … wasting food is just a bad choice – for the environment and for your neighbors. Almost entirely selfish to waste food imho – it’s a choice people make whether intentionally or not ….

Grist just published an update from UC Davis on our American pledge to reduce food waste by 50% taken in 2015.

The United States is nowhere near its goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030, according to new analysis from the University of California, Davis. In September 2015, the U.S. set an ambitious target of reducing its food loss and waste by 50 percent. The idea was to reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfills, where it emits greenhouse gases as it decomposes, a major factor contributing to climate change.

Grist (Article)

How much food waste does each American produce?

Researchers calculated that, even when taking reduction measures into account, the U.S. still generates about 328 pounds of food waste per person annually — which is also how much waste was being generated per person in 2016, shortly after the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the waste-cutting goal. 

Grist (Article)

That’s a good portion of waste going down the drawn so to speak … so even with action plans to reduce waste, nothing really changed. Why? The article pushes on several elements – our thinking, the lack of US federal policy, the lack of actual caring for others, etc …

Which without such broad consensus on actions or even identifying and accepting the problem of food waste, each of us are on our own.

Until there are more options for both pre- and post-consumer food waste, composting may be the best, most accessible option for many people. “It is the easiest thing to do,” said Leonard. “And it’s probably the safest thing to do until we have better protocols in place.” 

Grist (Article)

For me, this means it’s all about our choices. What food do we purchase, secure for our nutrition (how far away does it travel, how was it grown, how were the people growing it cared for), the portions we take (take what you want, eat what you take my dad always said), and what we do with the leftovers (keep and eat later, compost, etc). It all boils down to our choices.

If you are wasting more than you want, choose again.

Image from Grist
featured image and other image from MSFT CoPilot