Plenty of news from Food Waste World recently: There’s an increased likelihood of the EU banning “best before” labels on shelf-stable foods like grains, canned goods and frozen items. The Dutch and Swedish farming ministers sent a letter recommending that course of action to the EU Agriculture Council, who discussed the issue today (but didn’t [...]
I recently had the honor of giving the first ever webinar for Food Tank. At least that’s what I’m told happened. I just spoke into my computer and hoped that people were listening. And based on the array of questions, at least a few folks were! While we allotted 15 minutes for questions, that time just [...]
With their Waste in Focus project, the wonderful team of photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio are doing for waste what they did for food in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. In the project, released last week and slated for an Earth Day exhibit in New York City’s Union Square, eight families of varying geography and backgrounds [...]
I just came across this recent EPA infographic on waste and particularly enjoyed this portion: That 95% statistic comes from the EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste report, which shows that composting levels have doubled from 2008 to 2012. (It went from 2.3% to 4.8%.) While those low amounts enable such dramatic improvement, at least we’re improving! I also [...]
There’s MAJOR NEWS in the battle against food waste–President Obama plans to issue an Executive Order making it illegal to throw away food. The Executive Order, helped forward by First Lady Michelle Obama’s urging, will amount to a de facto national ban on food waste. An Obama administration official with knowledge of the plans said [...]
The World Resources Institute just announced plans to create a Global Food Loss and Waste Measurement Protocol. Not since 1984 and Goldie Hawn’s glory days have I been so excited about the word ‘protocol.’ WRI, a DC-based think tank, is creating this set of guidelines to help countries and companies measure and monitor food waste/loss. The GFLWP, [...]
Courtesy of the UN FAO, here’s a nice overview of the environmental footprint of food wastage*: * Note–’Wastage’ includes both waste and loss. All the food produced but not eaten, globally.
Global food wastage accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except the US and China. For those who speak climate change, that’s 3.3 Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. That finding and many, many more are part of the long-anticipated UN FAO study Food Wastage Footprint (here’s the full study PDF). It’s particularly exciting for me [...]
