Mandatory food waste recycling in San Francisco? It has
been voluntary for a few years (using green bins like this minature on the right), but if Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan is accepted, separation of household food scraps will be required. Seattle has already committed to that course of action by 2009.
— —
Here are some useful hints on how to avoid food waste at this blog and more here at Love Food, Hate Waste, which lets you search recipes based on which foods “need using up.” One question: who has trouble using up chocolate??
— —
The answer, comes from the ridiculously detailed UK report, The Food We Waste. Britons waste 7,800 tonnes of “chocolate/sweets (full packs)” and 1,000 tonnes of “chocolate desserts” at a combined cost of almost £50 million ($97.5 million).
For a more digestible version of the study, check out the executive summary.
— —
Staying in Britain, the Daily Mail ran an entertaining food waste diary written by a North London woman. Not to spoil it, but 36-year-old Ursula Hirschkorn tosses about half the groceries she bought for her family of four. After a wedge of brie goes bad in her fridge, she writes:
Now, I am all for good, smelly cheese, but this smelt like the contents of one of Max’s dirtier nappies. That will teach me for impulse buying — it makes the trip from store to swing bin without even being unwrapped.
And this humorous bit:
As I feared, the vegetable drawer contains the gooey remains of a cucumber, a couple of split cherry tomatoes and some suspicious looking mushrooms. I am not sure if the fungi were bought, or simply evolved in this primordial swamp.
Comments
6 responses to “Friday Buffet”
I heard on NPR the other day that Raleigh is banning garbage disposals. Their purpose is to protect the city plumbing but imagine if they tied it to a mandatory food waste recycling program.
Here’s the NPR piece: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88382453
I guess I should admit that while I heard it the other day (on what was apparently old podcast on my iPod) it was actually a story from back in March.
Jonathan,
I have come to enjoy your website. I look forward to hearing back from you about a compost solution that is going on now.
Jonathan
Andy, I had heard that Raleigh, the capital of my home state, has upheld the ban on garbage disposals. You’re right, it would be awesome if it were tied to a ban on food from landfills. It should, because not being able to put food down the disposal will mean more food waste in the trash. Actually, the Food Diversion Task Force that I’m a part of is hoping to push a ban on food waste in landfills through the legislature next year. Wish us luck!
Jonathan, can you elaborate? There are many “compost solutions” out there…
That poor woman, the comments on her article were all so mean!
Especially right after the food waste report came out – she’s not that much worse than average and nobody came out and said “I have this problem too.”
I’m pretty frugal, and I still have the “plan five meals but we only eat 3 of them” problem with meat – I’ve gotten to where I just only plan one meat meal a week and never, ever buy any meat product unplanned, because we won’t cook it in time.
I live in Seattle, and am in love with the mixed food/yard waste bins. Unfortunately, one year a yellow jacket nest sprung up right nearby, and the bin was crawling with the stinging buggers for months. The city wouldn’t deal with it (understandably), so I couldn’t move the bin til they stopped swarming for the year.
That setback aside–I’m more alert for y.j. nests when they’re small, earlier in the year–we find that it dramatically reduces our garbage volume. There’s plenty of food that you shave off 10% to 30% of the volume to eat in preparing it (peels, seeds, etc.), and it’s marvelous to not stick it in the garbage or down the drain.
We tried vermicomposting, but we didn’t have precisely the right place for year-round worm raising, and if neglected, we’d get hordes of flies.