I’ve been thinking a lot about packaging recently, as I’ve been writing something about Austin’s mostly packaging-free grocer, in.gredients. From a life-cycle assessment perspective, packaging is environmentally harmful. It’s just more stuff we’re using oil to create, often unnecessarily, that usually ends up in a landfill. Yet, it’s not that simple. Smarter packaging could limit [...]
Wasted food = wasted water. This handy Ecocentric blog post reminds us of that truth. — — Mixed news from Massachusetts: The DEP confirmed its upcoming 2014 commercial food waste ban and pushed for a 30 percent waste reduction by 2020 (Hooray!). But it also announced that they would remove the moratorium on building new [...]
Not every state has its own Waste Reduction Center. Even fewer have a state-wide Food Waste Reduction Project. Actually, I can’t think of one. While Iowa has long had the former (a part of the University of Northern Iowa for 25 years), it just now has the latter with the launch of the Iowa Food [...]
Earth Day is a good time to consider just how much we throw away–and not just food. We create 4.4 pounds of trash per day, which is pretty ridiculous. This infographic conveys just how wasteful we are. And food waste’s impact is even greater than pictured, as the numbers represent the percentage of waste created, not [...]
As part of my visit to Bucknell University this week, I organized a Zero Waste Dinner for a group of interested students. The idea was to create a meal that would produce no waste of any kind–be it food, paper or plastic. In addition to enjoying what they cooked, teams of students were involved in [...]
I spent a few days last week with about 50 other sustainability thinkers and doers on snowy, secluded Muhu Island in Estonia. We were there as part of the Clean World Brainstorm, an offshoot of the Let’s Do It! organization. Why Estonia? Because that’s the home of Let’s Do It!, which got its start by [...]
Thanks for the tips on avoiding food waste, Dr. Weil! — — There’s an appropriate mood to this fabulous European Union-made video on food waste. Lamenting? Melancholy? Also–awesome disclaimer at the end of the video: “All the food used during the shooting of this clip has been cooked and eaten by the crew.” — — [...]
The burgeoning site Say No To Food Waste was kind enough to create this nice collection of food waste studies. — — I’d definitely sign up for a Waste Buster scheme, especially if it involves Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and the gang. — — The issue of wasted food received some nice exposure here, courtesy of Joy [...]
Vermont towns are starting to sift through a recent law enacted that will change how they interact with waste. Through a series of steps to begin in 2015, Act 148 (lawyerese full text) will revolutionize the state’s approach to trash. As explained in this simplified version on page 9-10, the bill will require residents to [...]
There’s a difference between waste and loss. But no matter what we call it, East Coasters have discarded a whole lot of food in the last week as a result of Sandy. There’s the in-home loss caused by not having power or a back-up generator. Restaurants also experience the that problem, but one Manhattan eatery [...]
