Household:
You can reduce your personal food
waste in five steps:
1. Plan your meals before you grocery shop.
2. Make a detailed shopping list and stick to it!
3. Serve reasonable sized portions.
4. Save your leftovers.
5. Eat those leftovers!
Also, try to use what you already have in your fridge and cupboard. This site is a handy resource making do with what ya got.
Outside the Home:
Contact America’s Second Harvest at 1-800-771-2303 for information on food recovery organizations in your area. Your time or money would be greatly appreciated. For gleaning information, contact The Society of St. Andrew’s national office at 1-800-333-4597.
Navigate over to The Hunger Site daily to help erase hunger with one click.
Businesses: For restaurants and grocery stores interested in donating food, contact Food Donation Connection at 1-800-831-8161. They link donors with food recovery organizations.
What a great article you wrote for Friday’s, April 27th, Charlotte Observer and what a wonderful journey you have started. If you take time to visit http://www.secondhelping.us, you’ll read about a program I started in July of 2005 of collecting leftover food from departing vacationers at Holden Beach NC. If interested in further information, please contact me at BillSpier@aol.com.
And thank you for what you do to stop the terrible waste in this great country of ours.
All the best.
Bill Spier
[...] Take Action! [...]
Hello I am all for reducing waste, especially if it can go towards a better cause. I’m concerned because I attend a university and asked the lunch lady where all the food goes at the end of the day (non-touched), and she said they throw it away. I was appauled and I really want to do something about it. I know I’m just a student and there are many laws against giving food away to shelters and such, but is there anything I can do about this? Please let me know! My university is located in California.
Thank you,
Tanya
Hey Tanya. Right on!
If the food hasn’t been out on an open, self-serve buffet, it can be donated. I would contact the local food recovery group or food shelter to see if they’d be willing to pick up the excess food. Then approach the dining services people and say you have a solution that will save them money (in trash pickup fees) while feeding hungry people.
To find a local food recovery agency, call America’s Second Harvest or Food Donation Connection.
There are no laws against giving food away to shelters. In fact, there’s a law protecting anyone who donates food from liability suits.
E-mail me (wastedfood at gmail) with any questions or to let me know how it’s going.
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on getting my university involved in the food composting program. I think this program is a wonderful way to reduce food waste in our landfills and it is being used for a better cause. If anyone has started the program at their local school or university, please help me to get my university involved.
Mary
Hi Jonathan.
Thanks so much for your keen interest in the issue, and for compiling so many great (and shocking) facts for us to see.
We have just linked your site to our google groups page, and I have used one of your public photos as an illustration… Hope you don’t mind. We are a small group of sustainability minded people in a small rural area.(Queensland, Australia) Our concerns are varied; in a country area with low income levels, being sustainable seems too hard for many. We do have lots of farmers in our region who have to plough excess crops into the paddock and we would like to figure out a way to utilise that for low income families. A long and drawn out feasibility study is underway….
Susan
I made a film about food waste after writing a longer article about waste, hunger and composting (http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976745409) a couple of years ago.
Please check the 8-minute version out, and feel free to post it on your site!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNIOT4NsZ9s
Many countries do not have storage space for crops or for food that is ready to sell, especially in the Soviet bloc and China bloc. In Kazakhstan, for instance, farms have no storage. There are small buildings for tractors. A horse farm I was at had one long horse barn but little else for the farm in terms of storage.
Here in Israel, “Table to Table” runs a service which includes gleaning from fields, collecting leftover food from banqueting halls (food recovery), and providing sandwiches for school lunches for poor children.
Hello. As a single, childless adult, living alone, the greatest cause that leads to my wasting food is that food in the US is greatly sold in packaging and quantities that are too great for me to use in a timely manner. The food turns bad; I have to throw it out. I’ve lived on a few other continents and there, it was much easier to buy a handful of something, a pinch of something, half of a cup of something, including shampoo, and other non-food products. People were able to bring their own jars or other containers and purchase as much or as little of a “loose” product as they needed. A recent supermarket in my state, NJ, just eliminated the “bin” aisle, where cereal, candy, nuts, rice, powders, etc., were available by any weight. They claimed “unsanitary conditions.” I eat out for business purposes, so that’s enough for me and I cook a wide variety of things at home. So, I would put forth that we are in big trouble even prior to the second step, listed as number two, on your tips to reduce food waste. I can plan (I know exactly what I need to make Beef Burgandy) and I do make a “detailed” shopping lists(detailed means item and amount, right?) but there is nowhere (virtually) for me to go to buy what would be my “true quanity” detailed grocery listed items: 20 grapes, two tablespoons of cilantro, one teaspoon of red vinegar, a handful of ground veal or half a cup of ketchup. For millions like me, food is not available for purchase at the supermarkets in the reduced quantities we need in the first place. Thank you for your all of efforts and keep up the good work. Sincerely, Tracy Jordan
This is a great source of information!
What a great site.
Did you know the world’s premier solution for on-site recycling of food waste is hitting America this year?
Reduces CO2 emissions from waste collections (and reduces money too!), reduces methane emissions from landfill AND generates compost in 14 days!.
Thought you might be interested as a Food Waste Lamenter…pass the fork…nom nom nom!
This is a very inspirational site. I am a highschool student currently working on a project about hunger, and was shocked to see the number comparison between 55% of people in africa suffering from malnutrition and over 30% of food in my home city of Toronto being wasted. I was so glad to see the resources on this website of ways to take action against wastefulness. I will definetly bring this issue and its shocking facts up in converstion with my fellow classmates, as i am sure that they, like me, did not know the wastefullness that takes place in their own country.
Thank you,
Brianne
Hi,
My name is Jackie, and I’m the ambassador for Here’s Life Inner City NYC.
We’re an urban ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, Intl., dedicated to equipping churches to provide help and hope to the poverty-stricken in their communities. This year we’re trying to provide 7,000 families in the New York Metro area with a “Box of Love”. This is a Thanksgiving feast for a family of six, plus scriptures.
By “Dining In”, you are able to donate what you would otherwise spend eating out. We post daily recipes on Facebook and Twitter.
Dine In, and donate what you save to give a Box of Love to a family of 6 this Thanksgiving.
The deadline to receive donations is Nov. 4th!
To learn more, click http://bit.ly/JBZaI
God Bless and Thank-you!
Jackie (For HLIC NYC)
Hi,
In regards to my previous post, the last day to receive donations to feed starving families in the entire New York metro area for Thanksgiving is November 4th…only 2 days away!!
Please help us spread the word. http://bit.ly/gBu8Q
Thanks,
Jackie (for HLIC NYC)
Twitter: HLIC NYC
Facebook: HLIC NYC
Just wanted to send a huge thanks for this website and addressing the huge problem of food waste. Sustainability issues and especially waste of perfectly good food have always been problems that I’ve worried about personally, but had no idea of where to start or how to get involved. I cringe at all of the waste that goes on in privileged communities and countries, and sites like these provide the impetus for change.
Thanks again!!!