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Waste Management - Thurston County Challenges You to Waste Less Food

By Hildi Flores

Scraping your leftover food into the compost bin instead of the garbage is a great first step in reducing landfill waste and recycling resources, but it hardly mitigates the amount of resources used to produce the food that is wasted.

"If wasted food were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the U.S. and China," said Gabby Byrne, program director of Thurston County's Waste Less Food Challenge, in an interview with the Green Pages.

"Sometimes people don't make the connection between wasted food and the resources needed to produce that food."

Byrne continued to cite statistics illustrating the scale of the problem. While approximately one in every six Americans experiences food insecurity, 25 percent of the food Americans buy is wasted. It requires 2.5 billion acres and the annual flow of the Mississippi River to grow and irrigate just the food that is wasted. When that food reaches the landfill, or even your compost pile, it releases methane as it decomposes.

"Composting is preferable," said Byrne, "but it focuses on the recycling part, not the reduction part."

The Waste Less Food Challenge is designed to assist consumers in auditing their own food waste, as well as providing tips to reduce waste and in turn save money. "The average family spends $130 per month on food that is thrown away," said Byrne.

The challenge only requires about ten minutes per week for the duration of one month. The first week entails collecting all food waste in a measureable container, recording the total volume and the types of food that are wasted.

Throughout the following three weeks, consumers can use the data collected in the first week to implement the provided tips to reduce food waste, while continuing to measure the food that is wasted.

At the end of week four, participants are asked to share their results at www.WasteLessFood.com to be entered into a monthly drawing for free groceries.

Thurston County is one of many entities worldwide that is taking action on this issue. "The United Nations, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Natural Resource Defense Council have realized how impactful wasted food is in terms of resources and greenhouse gas emissions," said Byrne. "The UN is particularly concerned with population growth and how to feed them."

Byrne referred to a similar consumer food waste reduction program in Britain, which over the course of five years reduced the United Kingdom's food waste by 16 percent.

Byrne said public response to the Waste Less Food Challenge has been "outrageous, so strong and positive." She said the program grant ends in June, but she doesn't anticipate the focus going away anytime soon.

To learn more about the Waste Less Food Challenge, visit http://www.WasteLessFood.com


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Updated 2015/01/07 21:14:22