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WHOOPS! Did you leave almost
half your groceries in the parking lot?
Imagine
this: You go to the grocery store and buy five bags of groceries.
On your way out, you drop two bags on the ground...and keep
walking. That’s what Americans essentially do every day--waste up
to 40% of the food they buy. At the same time, one in seven
Americans struggles to put enough food on the table.
The REAL Cost of Food Waste
There are significant consequences to that waste,
financially and environmentally. According to the book American
Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and
What We Can Do About It), the average American family
spends approximately $2,220 per year on food that is never eaten.
According to the UN, if food waste were a country, it would
be the third highest global greenhouse gas emitter behind China
and the U.S.
Though
critically important, composting these materials to keep them out
of the landfill isn’t enough of a solution to food waste. The
food itself is only the tip of the iceberg of what actually gets
wasted. The embodied energy,
water, and other resources used to grow that food and get it from
the farm to the consumer have significant environmental impacts,
so composting should be the last resort after preventing the food
waste in the first place. Some facts about the
wasted resources of food waste:
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Anywhere
food is grown, sold, or eaten, food is wasted. See where food
loss occurs at Fix.com
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Food
loss and waste is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse
emissions. Find out more from the World Bank.
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Take a Bite out of Food
Waste
Most
food waste in the U.S. is generated in the home or by
restaurants. That means making changes in our personal lives can
make a significant difference. Here’s what each of us can do:
Shopping
- Plan out meals for the
week, make a list and stick to it.
- Buy the “ugly” produce
(bruised fruit, knobby carrots, funny-looking potatoes).
- Ask if the store offers
still good, but on-its-way-out, produce at a discount.
- At the Farmers’ Market,
ask for “seconds.” This less-than-perfect produce is often
sold at a discount.
- Buy local, in-season
produce or join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to reduce the amount
of food lost to long-distance travel conditions.
Storing and Cooking
- Easily track and
manage the food in your home with the No Waste app, which helps you
organize food by expiration dates, see your food
inventory, and track your food waste by
marking your food as eaten or expired.
- Make an “Eat Me First”
bin or use a dry erase board to note what needs to be eaten
soon.
- Use clear containers to
store leftovers and/or label and date the contents.
- Plan to have a
leftovers night each week. Casseroles, stir-fries,
frittatas, soups, and smoothies are great ways to use leftovers
and wilted vegetables.
- Make soup stocks from veggie scraps and bones (And
then compost them!)
- Almost any food can be
frozen if you’re running out of time to eat it. Read these
tips from NRDC’s campaign Savethefood.com to make your freezer
into a warrior against food waste.
Dining
Out
- Don’t let food go to
waste when you are out-and-about and can’t finish your
dinner. Bring your own to-go container for leftovers.
Sharing
- Too many zucchini?
Share the bounty from your garden with neighbors, friends,
coworkers, or a food bank.
- Recruit a team of
volunteers from Denver’s Foraged Feast to pick your apples or
other edible fruit before it falls.
Get
involved!
- Denver Food Rescue picks up
soon-to-expire produce from local grocery stores and
delivers it to food pantries and day shelters. Volunteers often pick up and
shuttle produce by bike!
- Among other food
distribution efforts including a mobile pantry, Food Bank of the Rockies picks up surplus food
from restaurants, caterers, and grocers and transports it to
hunger relief programs.
- We Don’t Waste rescues food from donor
partners and has a team of volunteers saving leftover food
from Denver Broncos games.
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First Reduce, Then Compost
After
doing what you can to reduce food waste, remember to compost! It’s
estimated over 50% of a household’s waste in Denver are organics
that, when sent to landfills, produce methane, a potent
greenhouse gas. By composting, we reduce landfill
waste and methane generation—and help advance a
promising climate solution: carbon farming.
In
carbon farming, regenerative land practices, including the
application of compost, help infuse soils with microbes that not
only promotes plant growth, but also increases
soils’ ability to absorb the carbon from the atmosphere, a
process called carbon sequestration.
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On
September 23rd, Eco-Cycle brought together a community
working collaboratively to realize the vision of carbon
farming as a promising climate solution in Colorado at our
Carbon Farm-to-Table dinner and tour (view photos of the event here).
We're working with local governments, academia, farmers,
businesses, fellow nonprofits and others to advance
composting and carbon farming throughout the state. Carbon farming is currently in its
pilot stage in Colorado, but Eco-Cycle and many other entities
are working together to make carbon farming measurable,
replicable, and scalable in Colorado and throughout the
Rocky Mountain West.
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Volunteer
to be a Recycle Pirate at the Broadway Halloween Parade!
Bring
the whole family dressed up in your best pirate costumes and join
us as we walk with the Overland Park Neighborhood Association
pirate ship float. Volunteer with
Eco-Cycle and help spread the message to recycle and compost
instead of burying valuable resources in the landfill by handing
out City of Denver Zero Waste brochures with an
announcement on our free year of composting contest. Bring props
like recyclable cans and jars!
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Help
Denver reach its 2020 Sustainability Goal of increasing its
recycling and composting rate to 34% or greater! We will discuss
how to get City Council to adopt changes that incentivize
recycling and composting. Bring yourself and a friend! Coffee at
the Point has a parking garage off of N. Washington St. and
serves food, coffee and beer and wine. Email jasmin@ecocycle.org to
RSVP.
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