Category: Food waste

Watch your waste: The problem with airline food and packaging

Read the full story from CNN.

According to the International Air Transport Association, airlines produced 5.2 million tons of waste last year, and will produce over 10 million tons annually by 2030. While the statistic includes a host of disposable products — from wine bottles to plastic toothbrushes — a large chunk is directly related to food service. From harnessing behavioral data and using cups that can be composted to donating nonperishable food items and on-board recycling, here’s what airlines are doing to divert cabin waste from landfills.

NYC Food Waste Fair to offer businesses ‘soup to nuts’ display of reduction and diversion

Read the full story in Waste Dive.

Anyone in New York’s service industry is well-acquainted with the vast amounts of food waste coming out of kitchens and businesses on a daily basis. Though unless that business is big enough to be covered by the city’s organics diversion mandate, they may not know why or how to do anything about it yet. An upcoming city-organized event aims to give those businesses so much information that they’ll have no excuse but to start.

On July 25, the NYC Food Waste Fair will bring together professionals from the recycling industry and the food service industry for a “soup to nuts” display of what’s possible. Organized by the Foundation for New York’s Strongest and the Department of Sanitation (DSNY), the event will feature exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations about every major step of the food recovery process.

Restaurants Are Returning Their Empty Oyster Shells To The Ocean To Rebuild Decimated Reefs

Read the full story in Fast Company.

A partnership between a nonprofit and a waste-management company in Mobile, Alabama has already diverted 2.8 million oyster shells from landfill.

Study: Measures of food waste are ‘overstated’ and potentially consequential

Read the full story at Food Dive.

  • A new study published on behalf of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association claims measures of food waste are “inconsistent” and may be overstated.
  • The authors of the study cite four different definitions of food waste — attributed to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), E.U. Fusions, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — stating they are all “lacking in some way.” The authors simplify their definition of food waste as “the difference between the amount of food produced and the sum of all food employed in any kind of productive use, whether it is food or nonfood.”
  • The definition of food waste by the authors illustrates that food waste, under the parameters of other definitions, is overestimated — in part because measurements value food waste at retail price, rather than upstream prices.

 

Is It Really So Offal? ‘Ugly Food’ Boot Camp Entices Chefs And Diners

Read the full story from NPR.

This meal taps into JBF’s boot camp initiative and hits more than one sweet spot for chefs. Most obviously, the less food that goes in the trash, the more money a chef saves in an industry notorious for tight margins. But even before that, if a chef can buy the produce that a farm otherwise cannot sell — as in the case of the fruit and vegetables used for tonight’s dinner, which was supplied by food-rescue organization Hungry Harvest — that chef is helping farmers earn a living wage. And offering up an animal that promotes healthy agriculture can help cooks work toward saving the planet to boot. Win-win-win.