But first watch this video for a quick overview of the Food Waste footprint! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCVrkcaH6Q
1)The first level of food waste is on the farm. Even though 50% of land is used for agriculture, much of the food grown will be wasted due to lack of market conditions, labor shortages, mechanical harvesting, food safety rules, weather and disease. Additionally, farmers have to respond to a very competitive market in which consumers standards are the picture-perfect unblemished peach. Forget foods that are simply damaged- farmers are being compelled to not even waste their time picking up berries that are “too small,” but perfectly edible, for example. The imperfect produce movement was started on the West Coast in attempt to combat this issue- the service offers “ugly,” fruits and vegetables that have been collected from small farms delivered straight to people’s front doors at a discounted rate. Additionally, the House and Senate recently (2018) passed a bill allocating nearly 500 billion dollars to programs related to reducing the harmful impacts of food waste. Included in the Food Waste programs supported by this initiative are local compost and waste reduction plans and liability protections for food donations.
2)Grocery Stores and Food Distribution:
Around 13% of our annual food waste is caused by grocery stores and food distribution places. Factors contributing to this waste are “out of date” food, imperfect produce, and consumer actions. Sell-by dates lead to the disposal of perfectly good food. There is a huge difference between sell-by and consume-by dates, something grocers fail to understand. Check out a cool grocery store in Massachusetts working to fight this problem (https://dailytable.org)!! Imperfect produce is often thrown away. Additionally, the same aesthetic standards mentioned above apply to grocery stores. On top of this, the ways in which grocery stock is managed leads to food waste. Stores want shelves that are full and stock always on hand, often leading them to purchase more than necessary. There is a desire to display abundance when what is really needed is careful decision making about how much we should have. France was able to pass legislation that banned grocery store waste entirely!
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/24/586579455/french-food-waste-law-changing-how-grocery-stores-approach-excess-food
3)Household Consumers- Many of us are not truly aware of how much food we are single-handedly wasting, and even more of us lack the information/skill set required to properly store or “use up,” the food we buy. Consider the ways poor storage, poor visibility in your refrigerators, misjudged food needs, and poor meal planning has affected your food choices. Personally, for my family, one of the hardest things to get used to as a student is moving from living with a family to needing to prepare food for myself, while still feeling inclined to buy the bulk promotions from Costco. Perhaps the most popular issue that has surfaced in the last few years is confusion over date labels causing premature discarding. Check out https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2947 to see about a bill that was passed to standardize the date indicator system.
Also, challenge yourself with this worksheet to log your own food waste! What’s great about this movement is that anyone can take part in it!
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-02/documents/get_smart_ftgtw_2_1_2016_pubnumberadded_508.pdf
In class this week we will explore the causes/sources of food waste, the consequences that we face because of it, and the potential solutions that we have to address it. Before then, please, answer the following questions:
As we created this weeks blog post together, please take a little extra time and thought to respond to this.
1. What do you know about food waste? Where did you learn it from?
2. Find two examples of actions (from community organizing to legislation) that are being taken to combat food waste. Discuss what you do or do not like about these strategies.
3. What are changes that you would like your community (wherever that may be) to make to address food waste?
-Hannah and Maria
1. Growing up my mother was very anal about food waste which was primarily due to the limited food we had growing up. It was very important for her that my sister and I would eat everything we were given/ that we had to eat the leftovers as our next meal. I may have also learned about food waste through peers and society in that, finishing the food on your plate was seen as socially acceptable and to “think about those who are unable to eat” when I wasted food.
ReplyDelete2.I know that the college donates leftover cafeteria food to local organizations, such as Oakland House where I used to work. Working at Oakland House, a pizza company donates excess pizza weekly (possibly Little Ceasars?). I find that both donations are extremely helpful for individuals with food insecurity, but the one thing I noticed was that these donations often did not consist of fresh vegetables or fruits. Most of our recipients ate processed cooked foods for both lunch and dinner at Oakland House unfortunately. I think it would be beneficial if we could get local farmers to donate excess fruits and vegetables to local organizations that help low-income persons.
3.I would like to see businesses in our community that may have excess food to donate that food to community homeless shelters and other organizations that provide food assistance. For example, when the Food Co-op’s fridge/freezer broke they should have donated the food instead of throwing it in their dumpster, such as Trader Joes which donated their food when they had a fridge/freezer failure.
Well to start out, I just learned a TON about food waste… so thank you for sharing and collaborating on such a complicated and dynamic problem in our country. I like how your perspective stemmed from local efforts, all the way to national efforts. It was uplifting to read about the solutions that have been implemented.
ReplyDelete1.
I have a very complicated relationship to food waste, because in many ways it is has been something that I’ve had a relationship with my whole life. My mother made a really big deal about not letting food go bad, and eating food until it was finished. Of course that makes sense, because she bought the food and many times prepared it, and feeding a family is expensive. However, when I was 13 I realized that University of Michigan kids would throw out their stuff at the end of their quarter and this would often include prepackaged, undamaged foods. My friend Addison and I would often go dumpster diving around this Spring each year until I moved out of Washtenaw County when I was 17. The food we found we often kept, as he and I were both living away from home and grocery shopping was hard. When I was 16 I dumpster dived at a Kroger for the first time in my life, and left with enough groceries to last me the week. I realize that food waste is very much ingrained in the consumer lifestyle, and that employees often have no say what can or can't be thrown out.
2.
I know that my friend Molly, who is a vegan, hasn’t done a grocery full grocery shop in the past 3 years in Kalamazoo because she is able to dumpster dive for all the foods she needs to eat for a week. And the even more badass thing about it is that she is able to fit all the groceries in her backpack and on her bike. She has taught numerous Kalamazoo people how to dumpster dive in Kalamazoo because there is just that much of an abundance of food waste in this city.
I remember when Kalamazoo College had a composting group that would drive to off campus housing and pick up composting… I really wish they would launch this agian because I know the amount of people who did composting went down after that program stopped!
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In my community I am eager to see food waste continue to be cut down. One of the ways I see this happening is continuing to talk to people about the importance of composting, as well as the importance of checking dates on foods, and transforming leftovers.
1. What do you know about food waste? Where did you learn it from?
ReplyDeleteI learned to try to waste as little food as possible through my job working as a Cook and my own family. My mom has always been intense about keeping and using leftovers. Likewise, the organization I work for does not have much money so in the kitchen we always emphasized the importance of making the right amount of food and using leftovers or odd foods however we could. I appreciate this because I have gotten quite good at experimenting with foods (I have made so many bread spreads out of weird things) and I actually have a ton of fun doing it. Plus, it's been helpful for me when I am cooking for myself, to waste as little food as possible!
2. Find two examples of actions (from community organizing to legislation) that are being taken to combat food waste. Discuss what you do or do not like about these strategies.
I recently saw that the European Parliament banned single-use plastics by 2021. This is pretty crazy when you think about it - I realized that in a single day, I use so many single-use plastics! I think this is especially true of the U.S. where there seems to be a hyperfocus on individually wrapping all sorts of items, let alone relying on plastic cups, straws, cutlery, etc.
I was recently talking to a friend who works at Gonzo's and he was telling me that the new owners have decided to start using plastic plates, paper napkins, etc. even though the restaurant already had real plates, napkins, everything. This decision baffles me and I wonder what the reasoning behind that was.
3. What are changes that you would like your community (wherever that may be) to make to address food waste?
I wish we had more spaces on campus to store/heat food. Now that I live off campus, I have to be careful when making my lunches because I cannot bring anything that will go bad. Or sometimes I bring food and it does end up going bad and I have to throw it away. Also I wish that we had a way to reuse/wash the plastic cutlery in the book club??? I regularly think about this and have started just taking home my cutlery and reusing it myself. It seems so wasteful and we could cut down on costs if there were just a box to put your used forks in or something!
Yes to the cutlery! I try to keep a set of the plastic stuff in my office so I don't have to take new ones but I still have ended up with a whole bunch of them at home in my kitchen. They are solid plastic--it seems dumb that we are only using them once before throwing them away.
Delete1) The first time I began seriously thinking about food waste was in my Political Ecology of Waste class with Aman Luthra. I don't remember the exact statistics, but I remember reading something that talked about the make-up of landfill volume and was shocked to hear that a large part of the landfill was taken up by organic matter, including food that had not broken down in the landfill because or the conditions in the landfill that slowed the processes of decay. In addition to all the impacts shown in the video you shared with us, food waste also helps diminish the resource of land space.
ReplyDelete2) The first action combatting food waste that I have observed is a movement brought to campus a few years ago called the Clean Plate Club. After doing some research, I was surprised to find out that it was originally established in 1917 to keep food waste down during WWI. Since it has received criticism for potentially leading to overeating, I think a better way to look at it is to only take what you know you are going to eat. Perhaps a more useful tool would be thinking not about clearing your plate, but clearing your refrigerator. I love leftovers for their quick and easy meals, but I know some people dislike eating leftovers or forget about them entirely (that's me). If we all set aside time each week to take stock of our fridge and fish out those Tupperware hiding in the back, I expect the amount of wasted prepared food would decrease.
I have also been thinking about recent discussions we've had surrounding sustainable farming practices and more community-centered food networks. I think the intimacy of a community food network would naturally decrease food waste because of the community members' closer relationship to the food they produce and consume. It could also cut out problems created by the market for foods, like the overstock (and therefore waste) in grocery stores and the waste of underdesirable-looking produce. I'm interested to hear what other people think about community-based food networks and their potential impact on food waste!
3) I know a lot of my food waste comes from spoiled produce that I have not gotten a chance to cook. I also am aware that I am someone living without a car in a food desert (Kalamazoo). My ability to buy food for myself relies solely on other people (housemates, friends, boyfriend) telling me when they are going to the store and letting me go with them. Because of this, I never know when I might get a chance to get some more food, so I often end up buying too much to keep myself from going hungry in-between shopping trips. I have found ways to prevent this by observing what foods go bad the fastest and eating those first, but I would love to see several grocery stores open up within walking distance of my neighborhood and other neighborhoods in the city so that I and other people like me do not over-buy in one trip and can take several smaller trips more frequently to buy things as I need them. This will not only reduce household food waste; it could also help the Kalamazoo community stay healthier so that people who do not get many chances to go to the store have more opportunities to buy fresh produce instead of having to rely on longer-lasting processed foods.
1. I know about food waste from things like health and environmental science in high school, and classes here at college. I also know about it from familial knowledge: ideas about how much food people throw away, here and elsewhere, and the importance of trying not to throw away food.
ReplyDelete2. One example is the clean plate club here: a little volunteer movement to try and make people think more about what they’re eating and what they’re not. Another is a law I’d heard of where, in Washington state, organic waste found in the garbage faces a monetary fine. I am not opposed to either of them. One tries to control people from the top down to get what the lawmakers want, and the other tries to motivate individual people, from the bottom up. Both have potential for good, and potential for bad.
3. I would enjoy more intentional planning of food purchases so as to guard against overpurchase. Some kind of family-by-family, or more collective, weekly grocery plan, where people try to estimate how often they’ll go out to eat, how often they’ll eat at home, how much they’ll need, and then plan accordingly.
1. What do you know about food waste? Where did you learn it from?
ReplyDeleteMy Dad was born and grew up during the Great Depression and I can totally see how growing up during that time shaped him and in turn, shaped my family's relationship to food and waste. I remember that my Grandma used to talk about the Depression and one thing that she said was that because they lived on a farm, they were luckier than a lot of people who lived in the city because even though they were poor (they couldn't sell their milk because no one had money to buy it), they were never hungry because they had the ability to grow and raise their own food. But because they worked so hard for their food, none of it was wasted (I remember my grandmother saving butter wrappers to grease pans with and yelling at me for not getting every bit of jello powder out of the envelope).
As a kid, I was taught very early not to waste food. We were a clean-your-plate family and it was expected that I eat every bit of food on my plate or I would be made to remain at the table until I did. I remember going to family reunions and seeing my cousins scraping mounds of uneaten food from their plates into the trash and it seemed so weird to me--that would not have been acceptable at all in my house.
Even now, I mostly come to food waste from a personal and selfish perspective--I work really hard for my food and it bothers me a lot when I do all the work to grow food and then it doesn't get eaten. It seems disrespectful to my own energy and to the plant's life.
I'm not sure when I became aware of food waste as a global problem. I think it must have been a documentary or article or something. I remember watching this piece by John Oliver a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY.
2. Find two examples of actions (from community organizing to legislation) that are being taken to combat food waste. Discuss what you do or do not like about these strategies.
ReplyDeleteFood Not Bombs: http://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/faq.php. I learned about Food Not Bombs from a Slow Farming alum who is involved in the Ft. Collins, CO chapter of FNB.Check out the website above--it's pretty cool.However, police have been interfering with the group's free picnics lately: https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2019/02/12/food-not-bombs-rallies-after-fort-collins-shuts-down-picnic-homeless/2816554002/. One thing I think is really interesting about this group is the lack of hierarchy or formal organizational structure--it's just people getting together to recover food and feed other people. Pretty radical.
Gleaning is another anti-food waste movement that a Slow Farming alum educated me about: https://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/133059889/gleaning-a-harvest-for-the-needy-by-fighting-waste. It's actually an old practice where farmers would leave part of their crop in the field for their community to glean from and it's even in the Old Testament that farmers would do this in order to feed "orphans, widows and travelers". These days folks do it in order to prevent waste. It's a challenging practice because it takes a lot of coordination, sometimes on short notice in order to gather people to do the gleaning and to transport the produce to places where it can be used. But I like the idea of it--I know that even in our gardens there is frequently produce that we don't end up picking because we don't have a market for it and we've picked all that we can use and we don't have the time to harvest more. It would be nice if there was a convenient way to let people know that they could come and gather what remains.
ReplyDelete3. What are changes that you would like your community (wherever that may be) to make to address food waste?
ReplyDeleteI'm going to answer this from a personal perspective again. One thing that really bugs me about our farm is that we sometimes end up with food waste at the very end of the growing process because we simply run out of time to process food and put it up for the winter. For example, this year I ended up composting 5 bushels of apples that we spent at LOT of time and energy growing, harvesting, and storing in our cooler. After all of that work, I ran out of time to make more applesauce and apple cider and they ultimately spoiled. A personal goal that I have is to scale back our operation to meet our available labor so that we aren't wasting time, energy, and food in this way.
1. My stepmother goes through our fridge at home very often, discarding anything she feels has been around "too long." As a kid I would get very stressed because sometimes I wouldn't eat something fast enough to save it from the trash. My mother has always taught me to use what we have, and I grew up making stews out of whatever vegetables needed to be eaten. When I got to college, I learned in my first year seminar about the perceived desires of the American consumer for perfection. This translates to producers only selling the "perfect peach" as you said but also has permeated consumer consciousness in the sense that we take "best by" dates far too seriously--maybe this gets us into discussions about what we consider "clean" or "safe" and why.
ReplyDelete2. The City of Austin, Texas has voted for an ordinance that requires restaurants over a certain size to separate out all their compostable material. Though this doesn't necessarily address what they are throwing away and why, it at least keeps some of it out of a landfill. The Society of St. Andrew's work also resonated with me because of something Amy mentioned yesterday on the farm. In the context of a particular harvest (I think it was potatoes but I can't remember), she explained that one of the issues they had was not being able to harvest all of them fast enough. St. Andrew's works to connects volunteers with farmers so that they have assistance in harvesting large yields. It is then donated to food banks and marginalized communities. To me, this makes a lot of sense and I'm sure is helpful for small farmers.
3. Speaking of my community as my parents' homes, I would really like to implement composting. I think they think it requires more effort than it actually does, but I have been doing it on and off campus since sophomore year and am eager to put it into practice at home. I also want to continue planning meals in the sense that if I have a lot of spinach, I also have several recipes in the forefront of my mind that require spinach so that I can use it efficiently and completely. This is also going to help me save money on food and therefore hopefully have the means to shop as responsibly as I can.
1.) What do you know about food waste? Where did you learn it from?
ReplyDeleteThrough my involvement with the campus composting program, I have dealt with food waste 'hands-on' for a couple years. With these experiences, I have really been forced to think about food waste in different ways. Its amazing how much food is able to be recovered through FRN (which sounds like such a great program), however, the compost team is still left managing over 1000lbs of food waste per week. And this is not all. Many foods such as meat and dairy we do not accept for composting, and further, I imagine that many people do not take advantage of the composting program at all. As a result, it might be conservative to estimate the campus throws-away an additional five to six hundred pounds per week. As you guys have outlined, there are serious problems with this epidemic from both the production and disposal side. These implications are heightened in places that do not have such programs to help carry the burden.
2.) Many big municipalities are implementing or have implemented municipal composting programs (such as San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, etc.). These programs are great because they allow citywide access to the responsible disposal of organic matter (not limited to food waste but also accounting for leaves and yard waste), and are able to significantly reduce the amount of food that goes to landfills. This has the potential to drastically reduce net methane emissions (although composting does release c02 as a byproduct) which can significantly influence the human impact on global climate change.
I am also aware of a non-profit in Grand Rapids that charges fees for composting services. They collect bins on bikes and use finished compost to assist with urban agriculture practices. While this is also great, if I had to have a problem, the program may not be accessible to everyone due to the prices that are set for the the services... However, while municipal composting programs may also charge service fee, individual 'disposer' costs are probably not as high because of involvement from city governments and economies of scale.
3.) I would love to see a growth in municipal composting programs especially for restaurants and large dining halls. While this does not necessarily address the problem of food waste directly, it is a way to handle the problem more responsibly from the disposal side. I also believe the presence of composting disposal options can significantly impact the ways in which people think about waste hopefully leading them to be more mindful.
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ReplyDeleteI think there were various parts throughout my life where I was exposed to food waste, but it wasn’t until last year that I actually started to think about it. I work at the college’s coffee shop, so I see a lot of coffee being tossed out and pastries, of course, this does not compare to all the food the cafeteria produces but nonetheless is food that is tossed out and in good conditions. When I took Prof. Francisco Villegas’ Anti-Colonial & Anti-Racist Theory course was when I started to think more about how environments and everything that is encompassed by them is important, food waste is one of them. Particularly when food is in good conditions and it is being tossed out rather than composed or given to folks that need it.
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I am all for food recovery networks, I think it is important to distribute food to folks that need it, my concerns/ questions are what the intentions are on the distributor’s end. For instance, a lot of the times these conversations are held by folks that have never experienced difficulties and their actions end up centering their guilt and diminishing those in need. Or end up embodying saviorism while perpetuating helplessness on those that need food.
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I think for my community, I would like for there to be solutions to food waste. The neighborhood I grew up in is mostly made up of restaurants and supermarkets that also have a kitchen. Every time I talk about composting or do that I think about how much my community could benefit from composting and creating small gardens. I also think about how much is being tossed out from these restaurants and supermarkets that could be distributed.
I learned most about food waste through composting at K. It’s quite a stinky, yet fulfilling experience. I think the idea of “waste” can often be misleading. Food is a crucial element of the ecological cycles. We eat food so that we could replenish ourselves with energy. Likewise, this principle is the same when we replenish the soil with the food that are uneaten through composting. This relationship between us, the soil, and food is such a fundamental part of our lives, yet our society often overlooks the issue. As far as I can tell, food waste is really not so wasteful after all but full of potentials in nurturing lives.
ReplyDeleteMany of my friends are involved with the Food Recovery Network at K. I volunteered once or twice during my first-year on campus. I definitely had very mixed-feelings from the experience. I think that the principle behind donating food to those who are in need perfectly makes sense. It’s the social element that makes the operation somewhat unnatural to me. We would go to the shelter and drop off trays of food without saying a word. I felt that there was this lack of connection with people and a vague sense of “savior complex” that made me quite uncomfortable.
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ReplyDeleteGenApril 24, 2019 at 10:40 AM
ReplyDelete1. I learned about food waste primarily through a course on Urban planning. I did a group project on how waste was managed in different ways (K College was actually an example in the project). I've also learned about food waste through my family composting, and through some classes in middle school (where reduce, reuse, recycle was drilled by my science teacher)
2. When I helped at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo, I was amazed at how many donations they received from local businesses that had excess food. I really liked the idea that food was no longer going to waste, but I also know that at times what is "excess" is not necessarily a steady source (ie very different donations depending on the week/purchasing). I believe that many of these companies donate every week no matter what, but the idea of so many "leftovers" that would normally go to waste is also hard to think about. I know there is also a composting movement at K, which I think many more schools should implement, because the food waste at schools is always huge. In watching the video, the speaker said "We all need to reduce food waste," but in many ways I feel this is a problem that "Western" countries struggle with (and especially the United States...somewhere there is a statistic that the United States produces the most waste, disproportionate to its size--this could've changed within the past few years though.). Waste seems to often be the result of a mindset problem (ie the food doesn't look good, too much food so it doesn't get eaten, etc.).
3. I think normalizing composting and making it accessible for people who don't neccesarily have the "space" or backyard to compost is one method that will help with food waste. Especially implementing this at schools/making people conscious of the amount of food wasted. I also think normalizing "weird" looking fruits and vegetables will help combat large amounts of food waste (this seems more of a cultural change--accepting food that doesn't always look the same or "normal).
1) Working to avoid food waste has always been a part of how my family prepares meals and deals with 'leftovers'. When we were in chicago, we had a composting bin for what we didn't use (mostly stems, egg shells...etc.) and were constantly challenged by my parents firstly to eat everything that was prepared (which also constitutes not preparing an excessive amount of food) while also making good use of whatever leftovers there may be. Once we moved to Michigan, these same goals remained with the additions of buying meat in bulk from local farmers, using as much of what we bought as possible (including bones, skin, fat...) however possible be that using bones for soup, feeding scraps to our dogs, or making prettles (ask me about it).
ReplyDelete2) Beyond simply challenging oneself and one's community (as in the case of my family, explained above), I think educating people, or working to provide access to to the kinds of information that could allow people to make more informed decisions on food use and avoidance of waste is a good step towards reduction of waste. If people are able to choose less wasteful options in what they buy, where they buy it from, what they do with it, and how they deal with things like 'scraps' and 'leftovers' is one way of instilling more agency and understanding in the decisions people make around food at all levels. Secondly, I think that community food programs could be an effective way of creating waste-conscious cultures around food. In my experience, communities that cook together create less waste collectively given the greater number of ways of using what would otherwise be waste, greater capacity to ewat what has been gathered and prepared, and a greater sense of responsibility and visibility for the ways in which we consume.
3) I think more communal ways of sourcing, preparing, eating, and using leftovers would help reduce food waste on a small-scale community level. I also think there could be much more time and energy put into educating ourselves and each other (through the educational 'system' or through community) on how to both waste less and better use what resources we do have.
(Sorry this is being posted after our discussion, it is the first time I could get to a computer that works with the website)
ReplyDelete1. A majority of the knowledge I have about food waste is from documentaries as well as I remember watching an episode of “Adam Ruins Everything” that looked at expiration dates. Some of my environmental studies classes touched on the aspects of food waste, although I don’t remember having a lecture or a significant portion of a class dedicated to it thus far. As you mentioned in the blog post, I knew the statistic of 40% of food being wasted and some of the causes of that waste. Specifically, the aesthetic that has become apart of our societies relationship with food and how it causes good produce to be thrown out. Lastly, while I was growing up, I distinctly remember my dad telling us not to throw food out based on expiration dates but rather its smell which I attributed to his background in food science and not wasting money.
2. There is a program called “Imperfect produce” that deliveries fruits and vegetables from farmers that are not able to be sold in grocery stores. However, utilizing this service does has a certain about of privilege as prices range from $11-43 for a box based on size and organic certification. I also wonder if the environmental impact of delivery because it does require gas, packaging, etc. Additionally, as mentioned previously in this class, there are services that donate excess food from cafeterias or restaurants to shelters or those who are food insecure. With this, I immediately see the issue of giving “lesser” good to those in need that I am sure we will touch on in class.
3. What comes to mind is more of a broad revamping of the aesthetic requirements that are written into law require what can and cannot be sold in store. I am not sure what the economic implications of this would be but possibly having more produce and less waste could bring prices down and make produce more affordable across economic classes.
1) I had never really been talked to or talked about food waste. I had mostly just felt really bad in situations when it crossed my mind that there would be an extreme amount of waste that would go straight to the garbage but I never thought about as a part of an extreme system that is incredibly entangled.
ReplyDelete2) One way I HAVE NOTICED PEOPLE COMBATTING FOOD WASTE IS DUMPSTER DIVING! i SAW MANY A DOCUMENTARY DURING ONE HELL OF A POPULARITY SURGE ABOUT 4 YEARS AGO ABOUT DUMPSTER DIVING AND NO WASTE SHOPPING. These media pieces really taught me a lot about this topic that I knew very little of. I also have been exposed to thinking about food waste in many different organizing spaces as we begin to think about food deserts and access to food.Thinking about soup kitchens and other places to get free food or food at a reduced price has led to many conversations about laws that prevent people from givign away what they will just throw away but it also has sparked many a conversation about those who throw away rather than give away becuase there would be no profit. It has engaged many a member in thinking about what ou responsibilities are to each other in ths world and what we each need to do.
3) I would relly ike to find ways to cook in different ways so as to use everything edible and not create any waste! I think these collective individual tasks could make one serious impact in the world and maybe inspire a few more people to join in too.