Boulder, Colo., is contemplating curbside food waste collection by truck. Alternately, they could reduce costs and emissions by sending around Ralphie (see right). Well, most of the emissions.
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This interesting New York Times piece examines North Jersey beefsteaks, the mostly male, meat-eating affairs. In it, the author (who also keeps an entertaining blog on […]

I have a dream. A dream that more school districts will follow the example of Wisconsin’s Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagen School District. Their composting program makes too much sense not to be emulated.
And while there are certainly larger problems in our country, I hope we see a day ‘when little black boys and black girls will be […]

From Reed College to the National Review, we’re really spanning the political spectrum this week. The conservative magazine has pretty fair article on how the Federal School Lunch Program wastes food and money.
Wasted food costs the government $600 million every year, with fruits and vegetables accounting for 42 percent of that waste.
This G.A.O. report supplies those figures. […]

I can hear the food waste alarm bells from a few states away, as a student blogger from an Alabama high school reports that his cafeteria won’t sell items a la carte. Seriously?
At lunch, you cannot buy any item of food separately, because it’s against Jefferson County regulations. You must buy a whole lunch, even if you just […]

While I just learned he is running for President, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel just jumped to the top of my list as the only politician who laments wasted food. In the same fantasy world in which Gravel lives, I hope to be appointed as America’s first Food Waste Czar. But I’ll settle for Secretary of Food Waste. 
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Good news for friends […]

It’s not often that we get front page food waste news. Because wasted food is so commonplace in America, it’s not usually newsworthy. 
Yet, an article generally makes the cut when the squandering costs more than a half million dollars and includes a nice helping of fraud. That’s what happened Sunday, when The Commercial Appeal broke a humdinger of an investigative story about mismanagement […]

In addition to aiding obesity, college cafeterias’ all-you-can-waste-eat plans cause great amounts of food waste. I’ve written on this before and even highlighted one interesting peer pressure solution.
Stuart Leckie, general manager of dining at Maine’s tiny St. Joseph’s College, invented a more practical way to cut waste and waists: eliminate trays.
I spoke with Leckie yesterday and he’s thrilled with […]

Food waste at colleges (or any all-you-can eat cafeteria) can reach upwards of one pound per person per meal. That’s why I’m always excited to hear about campus efforts to slow the taking-too-much phenomenon.
Rutgers University dining services posted a sign asking students to take only what they’ll eat. But JP Kemmick, a graduating senior at Pacific […]

Most of us can remember the euphoria of zipping out the school door for…RECESS! Yet, that rush often means uneaten food is tossed in the trash.
Studies have found that when lunch is after recess, elementary school students eat more and waste less–about 30 percent less (recess-before-lunch-powerpoint.ppt). And according to a 1996 survey, 78 percent of cafeteria managers cited “attention on recess, […]

With graduation in the air (colleges, at least), I thought I’d share this school-related story.
I recently corresponded with a ninth grader named Kristin on the topic of food waste. She was writing a social studies paper on hunger and waste, and she contacted me after finding this site. This was the second time a high schooler had written me on the […]