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Donating prepared foods can be harder than you think, but it’s important! As is reducing the overall excess at holiday or other gatherings.

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If you’re gonna build a casino, getting a $2.5 million federal renewable energy grant to defray the cost of an on-site anaerobic digester is like hitting the jackpot. It’s a solid ideas, as there’s sure to be plenty of buffet food waste to convert to energy…

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Finally, congratulations to the National Hockey League’s Food Recovery Program. The NHL program, which diverted arena food that would have been thrown away into 163,000 meals last year, won the Sports for the Environment Award.

More than 50 UK grocery retailers have signed on to The Courtauld Commitment Phase 2, which sets many waste reduction goals. Food is one of them. Interestingly, the food waste goal focuses on homes: reduce home food and drink waste by 4% from 2009 to 2012.

You might be wondering: What does that have to do with grocers? That’s the best part–UK supermarkets have taken some responsibility for their role in prompting home food waste. As a result, many grocers have launched campaigns to preach the food waste reduction gospel to their customers.

And so…there has been a 3% reduction in home food waste, according to WRAP. They are on schedule to meet the 2012 goal. Even more impressive, though, are the numbers in comparing 2006/7 with 2010. In that time, household food waste dropped 13% and “avoidable” waste decreased by 18%.

That represents a saving of millions in cash and CO2 equivalent tonnes. Once more–Huzzah!

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British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s is now sending all of its food waste to anaerobic digesters (to create energy). Bravo!

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And speaking of anaerobic digestion, or biodigesters, there’s one in “the kitchen of the future,” allowing it to run on leftovers.

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Notre Dame’s Waste-Free Wednesdays are back this year, after a successful run last November raising awareness and lowering waste. The best news: the starting measure of 4.63 ounces of food waste per student per meal is about 25 percent less than last year’s baseline figure.

That study, much to my delight, lists the amount of wasted food as a major obstacle to sustainability. The report notes the juxtaposition of “a significant amount of edible food waste that is sent to landfills” with 17% of citizens being food insecure.

To address that incongruity, the report recommends creating a Food Waste Task Force to push diversion. That term includes promoting food recovery and composting to recover food’s nutrients, among other things.

The report also pushes for school gardens to teach children where their food comes from. And then there’s the suggestion of building regional meat and seafood processing plants, both of which could create energy from the waste byproducts they create.

The report is definitely worth a read, if for no other reason than to see how beneficial a regional food system can be. And when that plan incorporates food waste diversion, it’s all the more heartening.

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Exciting News: The NY Times Online reports that The Grocery Manufacturers Association is planning a three-year initiative to reduce the amount of food supermarkets waste. The effort–in conjunction with the Food Marketing Institute–will trim the amount of food we send to landfills, aiding hungry Americans instead.

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Is OPEC turning to food waste for fuel? Not that OPEC, but the Orange Peel Exploitation Company is exploring a technology developed at York University that microwaves food waste to create a fuel.

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Despite what some in Britain claim, the public strongly backs separate food waste collection (according to a recent poll).

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Finally, I’m on my way to Cape May to give a talk at Sunday’s Guess What’s Coming For Dinner event. See you there, perhaps…

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The Stop Food Waste campaign run by the Irish EPA found that 30% of what Irish families buy is wasted. That means Ireland is (very) unofficially 3% less wasteful than the Brits, which will hopefully cause at least one celebratory pint to be hoisted.

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Somewhat disappointingly, the article “ORCA COMES TO PHOENIX CONVENTION CENTER” ended very differently than I first imagined. (The all-caps didn’t help…)

I do think having a large mammal to chow food scraps/attract and entertain visitors is…an idea.

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Finally, it’s heartening to see garbage big boys Waste Management join the composting game. The firm launched a dedicated food waste route in San Diego–they’re now collecting from seven Albertson’s supermarkets and a few other places. And they are buying a dedicated food waste truck, so the composting program will likely expand.

WM is also testing a food waste-to-energy plant in Orange County. I suggest an orca.

While I usually focus on oil, water is increasingly coming to the fore. To wit, this fascinating Dutch study that tallies foods’ water footprint. In addition to finding the water footprint of a city or nation, the study also calculates it for individual foods.

On page 54 of the study, we learn that chocolate, with 24,000 liters of water needed per kg, is among the worst offenders. We also get further evidence for eating chicken or pork instead of beef, and for fruits and vegetables instead of any meat.

Lest this idea prompts green fatigue (‘What other footprints do I need to worry about??’), here’s some free advice: Have a beer–only 75 litres per 250 ml glass! Or some water…

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Note: This Guardian piece prompted today’s post. And don’t forget to check out this UK report, which found that the water embedded in the food Britons throw away equals 6% of total UK water needs.

The event featured two other speakers, both EPA employees who work on food waste reduction. One of them brought up the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge, an encouraging idea that I haven’t written about here. Essentially, the program:

…encourages participants to reduce, donate, and recycle as much of their food waste as possible — saving money and helping protect the environment. Participants will conduct a food waste assessment, undertake three specific waste reduction activities, create a food waste recovery plan, and report progress using WasteWise ReTRAC.

Scrolling down on the site, you can find a bunch of useful tools to help facilitate the various steps. You’ll also find a list of participating schools, organizations and businesses.

And you may even notice that there are only 23 participants thus far. That seems like a miniscule small number to me. So…if you’re affiliated with a business, school or other organization and have been wondering how you can get that group to start reducing waste–here’s your chance!

Or maybe you’ve heard about wasted food’s ramifications before but find yourself in need of a refresher. In either case, it’s never a bad thing to consider why we shouldn’t squander food. So here goes:

There are environmental, ethical and economic reasons why food matters. The environmental implications of food waste alone make it worth avoiding. A massive amount of resources–mostly oil and water–go into producing our food. When we don’t use roughly 40 percent of it, we’re squandering those embedded resources.

In addition, when we send food to the landfill, its anaerobic rotting creates methane. That greenhouse gas is more than 20 times as potent at trapping heat as CO2. Given that and our staggering rate of waste, our food-filled landfills are steadily aiding climate change. Landfills are the number two source of human-related methane emissions. And while some landfills have systems in place to either destroy or harness its methane, they aren’t all that efficient.

From an ethical standpoint, it’s pretty simple. When you consider that 15 percent of U.S. homes are food insecure, throwing away food is morally callous. And no, the food you leave on your plate isn’t going to feed anyone (here or in a developing nation). But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t donate excess food instead of preparing too much. Or buy less food–to reduce the amount you’ll discard–and pass the savings along to your local food bank.

And finally, it doesn’t make much economic sense to throw away a good without using it. That holds true for individuals, families, institutions and government. Depending on spending habits, a family of four throws out between $1,300 and $2,200 a year. And on the whole, America squanders $160 billion annually. In both cases, it’s a waste of money that could better be spent elsewhere.

To be fair, we’re never going to completely eliminate food waste. There will always be some stuff that slips between the cracks. But for all three of the above reasons, we should strive to reduce the waste we do create. Do you care enough to make an effort?

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Cnet provides a neat snapshot of where we are with the…next wave of recycling.  

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Say it ain’t so! Lavish Indian weddings to be banned?

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Palo Alto is looking at building an anaerobic digester at its landfill. Early pricing doesn’t look so hot, but given the loose estimate of potential price per ton ($112 to $353), who knows. That’s quite a range!