I had such high hopes for the Chicago Tribune piece “Schools Promote Waste-Free Lunches.” When I read that headline, I thought of food waste, not packaging. As you can guess, the article is almost solely about the latter.
Yes, keeping food packaging from the landfill is a noble cause. But, I would argue, not as noble [...]

I was excited to see that Washington & Lee is recovering food at a Walmart! Nice to have some of those giant stores onboard. If they can do that nationwide, we’d really be getting somewhere.
While we’re at it, how cool is the Campus Kitchen at W & L?!
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Talk about a local answer for food [...]

Great news from Maine: In her Diner’s Journal blog, Julia Moskin wrote about a local grocer that finds a way to use up most of what it stocks. Oh, those frugal Mainers!
Moskin’s reported details on Rosemont Markets, a kind of outtake from her piece on Portland’s food scene, seem so obvious in hindsight:
When the local concord grapes [...]

This Friday I made gazpacho, or the cold soup of Spain, as it’s known in my house (from a favorite menu description). The soup served as the final destination for many of my end-of-season garden tomatoes.
I think the soup will enter our regular rotation next summer, as it’s easy, tasty and a nice way to use [...]

There’s much ado about kitchen bins in Britain, where there’s talk of a landfill food waste ban. I like seeing the different angles, from diverting food from the waste stream and its environmental benefits to Big Brother/fines. (Can you guess which way my bias slants?)
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The Telegraph brings us this slide show of produce oddities–all of which I’d [...]

The other NRA, the National Restaurant Association, is getting more serious about food donation. The restaurant group announced a new partnership with the Food Donation Connection, a kind of food recovery matchmaker.
This is great news, as many restaurants are hesitant to donate their excess food. Unfounded fears of liability and inertia/laziness are two major barriers [...]

I write plenty about keeping food out of landfills to prevent greenhouse gas emissions. So it was high time I visited a landfill specifically to see what a few methane handling systems look like.
Friday, I went to Orange (County, N.C.) Regional Landfill where my trash used to go, before I moved to the next town. My current [...]

Here’s a little drilling down on the cultural barriers to asking for doggy bags in the UK.
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Green Seal restaurant standards just received a nice boost in the form of national recognition (from ANSI). Not that I have a clue about design, but I’m still not wild about the Green Seal logo–it seems more blue than green [...]

Happy Zero Waste Week! Well, at least that is being celebrated in the UK. Here in the States, it’s the post-holiday ‘Wait, What Day is Today?’ Week.
Back to the UK, though, I came across this piece on the recent surge in doggy bag use there. I hadn’t realized the practice of taking home restaurant leftovers was/is [...]

Who says technology and food waste avoidance don’t mix? That combination works quite well–just ask LeanPath.
Which brings us to RFID tags, a microchip with an antenna that transmits information wirelessly to a reader. These tags are are now being used in Europe to track pallets’ progress through the “cool chain.” A Dutch company, a German retailer and a [...]