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1. In California's Monterey Bay the steelhead population has declined by 85%

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1. In California's Monterey Bay the steelhead population has declined by 85%

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2. Some animals are endangered due to the effects of food waste on the environment.

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2. Some animals are endangered due to the effects of food waste on the environment.

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3. Plastic is appearing the the food we eat, such as fish and other sea foods.

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3. Plastic is appearing the the food we eat, such as fish and other sea foods.

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4. The world wastes 750 billion dollars worth of food every year.

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4. The world wastes 750 billion dollars worth of food every year.

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5. Organizing your fridge and eating foods before they expire are a good habit

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5. Organizing your fridge and eating foods before they expire are a good habit

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6. Food waste is a major component to global warming

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6. Food waste is a major component to global warming

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7. There are many applications now that can help you prevent food waste. (Check Food)

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7. There are many applications now that can help you prevent food waste. (Check Food)

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8. U.S is one of the only countries that uses bags to save leftovers when people go out to eat.

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8. U.S is one of the only countries that uses bags to save leftovers when people go out to eat.

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9. France placed a law that it is to prevent food waste.

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9. France placed a law that it is to prevent food waste.

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10. 50% of the food made/grown in the U.S is wasted.

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10. 50% of the food made/grown in the U.S is wasted.

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Jack,

Here are some good sources:

Hunger

https://www.thp.org/learn_more/issues/world_hunger

http://wmbranchout.wordpress.com/issue-education-ideas/environmental-sustainability/

http://www.worldhunger.org/

http://www.wfp.org/hunger

http://www.globalpolicy.org/world-hunger.html

http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty

http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/

http://www.who.int/topics/poverty/en/

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/povertyreduction/overview.html

Sustainability

Environmental Protection Agency on Sustainability

Sustainability the Company

Sustainability Journal Articles

Economics by Blood & Gore

Environmental Trade Publication

Bloomberg on Sustainability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/

UNESCO Science for a Sustainable Future

UNICEF - Millenium Development Goals - Sustainability

UNESCAP - Sustainable Development for Asia and the Pacific

U.N. Economic & Social Council - Environment, Sustainable Development YouTube Channel

Global Footprint Network - has a pull-down menu that lets you compare each country’s ecological footprint versus the country’s biocapacity

http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm

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The effects of food have become a huge problem in the United States. The effects vary to damage of wildlife to changes in our climate. The wild life is a huge problem because many of our beloved animals are dying from all of the pollutants we are putting in our environment. The next problem is our climate. This is a huge problem because it is helping the theory global warming. If we reduced the amount of food waste in the U.S, then our environment would be safer and healthier to live in.

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perkembangan berita harian di rappler indonesia.

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News | Multimedia | Citizen Journalism | Social Media - RAPPLER INDONESIA

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Berita terkini dan opini terhangat dari Indonesia di Rappler. Berita dan opini penting Indonesia, inspirasi hidup ada di social newsroom Rappler.com. Rap and ripple.

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MANILA, Philippines - There is enough food in the world for everyone, according to the World Food Programme. Yet one-third of all food is wasted globally.

Over 1.3 billion tons of food is lost each year, the latest findings of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from 2011 showed.

Dr Liza Bordey of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PRRI) and Hazel Antonio, director of the National Year of the Rice 2013 campaign, provided Rappler a copy of the latest available rice wastage estimates from 2008.

Each Filipino wasted an average of 3.29kg/year, according to the Food and Nurtrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (FNRI-DOST).

The estimated rice wastage that year was 296,869 metric tons (MT), which accounted for 12.2% of the year's rice imports. The loss amounted to P7.3 billion. (READ: How much do farmers lose?)

With the same amount, more than 2 million Filipinos could have been fed. This is just in terms of rice, excluding the other kinds of food and resources we waste.
The biggest losers
FAO defines "food loss" as a decrease in the quantity or quality (nutritional value) of food intended for human consumption. This means that food loss may already happen even before it reaches consumers.

It occurs during the production, postharvest, and processing stages of the food supply chain. (READ: The status of PH Agriculture)

In the Philippines, the lack of modern agricultural technologies, resources and skills, infrastructure like irrigation systems and farm-to-market roads, land tenure, support for research, innovation, and agricultural workers contribute to food loss.

These deficiencies are mostly due to the financial limitations experienced by Filipino farmers and fisherfolk, as well as the lack of government funding.

Food loss impacts not only on food security, but also the country's economy and environment.

It harms agricultural livelihoods, hence affecting food prices, production, and supply - ultimately lowering agriculture's share in the country's economy. Poor production may compromise not only the food security of the families of agricultural workers, but also the household food security of Filipino consumers.

Food loss also harms the environment since "producing food that will not be consumed leads to unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions," FAO explained.

This can then intensify the effects of climate change, hence repeating the same pattern: food losses - food insecurity - economic and environmental implications - food losses. (READ: Climate change and food security)

Unless proper interventions are made, this vicious cycle can go on for years.
Types of food loss
FAO identified 5 types of food loss among crop and livestock products, depending on which level of the food supply chain they occurred:

Agricultural production

Postharvest handling, storage, transportation

Processing

Distribution, marketing, retailing

Consumption (household level)

Food loss at the consumption level is called "food waste." The term "food wastage" encompasses both food loss and food waste, as defined by FAO.

According to FAO, among developing countries like the Philippines, much of the food loss occurs before the consumption stage. More than 40% of food losses occur during the production, postharvest, and processing stages.

During postharvest in the Philippines, the physical rice losses can reach 15%, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) reported.

In the production process, water, fertilizers, labor, seeds, fuel, and other agricultural inputs are also wasted.

FAO highlighted some of the reasons behind food loss among developing countries:

Premature harvesting: due to food deficiency or immediate need for money. The crops then lose both economic and nutritional value, and may end up not being unsuitable for consumption.

Poor storage, processing facilities, infrastructures

Failure to comply with food safety standards

Lack of direct markets between small farmers and consumers

Wasteful consumption habits

Food loss also roots from degraded agricultural lands due to poor maintenance. In the Philippine context, the conversion of farmlands into other uses may also be a factor.

Although hunger and poverty persist in the Philippines, some consumers still take their meals for granted. At the same time, food scavenging is becoming frequent among the poorest. (WATCH: Meal of the day 'Pagpag')
Rice
Rice wastage among Filipinos may seem ironic since the Philippines is one of the world's biggest rice consumers and importers.

Source: Bureau of Agricultural Statistics

In 2010, the Philippines was the world's largest rice importer. This is despite being the world's 8 th biggest rice producer from 2006-2010.

From 1999-2003, on average, the country imported around 10% of its rice consumption requirements, IRRI estimated.

The present reality is a far cry from the rice self-sufficiency the Philippines enjoyed over two decades ago. In 1992, the Philippines produced much of its rice consumption requirements and even exported.

The rice import then was only minimal at 35,101 MT, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).

Since then, the Philippines has transitioned from being an agricultural exporter to being an importer.

Source: NSCB

As the country's population ballooned from around 65 million (1992) to over 98 million (2013), the country's rice requirements doubled from 5.7 million MT to 10.6 million MT in 2010. Despite the growing demand, the country's rice self-sufficiency dwindled, while import dependency increased.

In 2013, the National Food Authority (NFA) reported that the country's rice import was 205,700 MT. In the aftermath of Ttyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan), it imported an additional 500,000 MT from Vietnam.

Yolanda hindered the country's plans of attaining self-sufficiency. Yolanda cost the country billions of pesos in agricultural damages. The lack of proper preparation and response to such disasters also contributed to further food loss.
Reducing food wastage
Much needs to be done to reduce food wastage. Reducing food wastage is also part of the UN Zero Hunger Challenge.

One way of helping is by increasing awareness about the causes and effects of food wastage, not only among agricultural workers, but also among consumers, businesses, and government agencies.

More importantly, developing the country's agriculture sector can decrease food wastage. If fewer food is lost during the production process, more food can reach households. (READ: Pending Senate Bills related to agriculture and fishery)

However, this should also be partnered with fair income distribution so that consumers will have fair access to food. After all, food insecurity is mainly a problem of access rather than production, FAO said.

Consumption habits must also improve:

Do not purchase more than what you need

Do not immediately throw away food (i.e., soft fruits or vegetables can be converted into drinks, desserts, soup)

Instead of letting food spoil (i.e., grocery supplies expiring), share or donate them while they are still consumable

Be creative in the kitchen, clean leftovers can still be eaten or modified

FAO also advised food-related businesses to donate clean and nutritious food surpluses to those in need.

Italy has a law that enables schools, supermarkets, and restaurants to donate clean surpluses and leftovers to those in need. One city in Belgium requires supermarkets to donate their surpluses to food banks. (READ: Bill seeks to end PH hunger in 10 years)

Japan implements a "Food Recycling Law" which requires food businesses to safely convert their food wastage into raw materials for animal feeds or fertilizers.

"Reducing food losses and waste can make an important contribution to better nutrition," FAO concluded. - Rappler.com

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PH food wastage: Think twice before wasting your meal

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MANILA, Philippines - There is enough food in the world for everyone, according to the World Food Programme. Yet one-third of all food is wasted globally. Over 1.3 billion tons of food is lost each year, the latest findings of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from 2011 showed.

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Food waste is a bigger problem than many people realize. This article presents 20 easy ways you can reduce your food waste.

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Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. Recycling can benefit your community, the economy, and the environment. Products should only be recycled if they cannot be reduced or reused. EPA promotes the waste management hierarchy, which ranks various waste management strategies from most to least environmentally preferred. The hierarchy prioritizes source reduction and the reuse of waste materials over recycling.
On this page:
Benefits of Recycling

Environment

Recycling provides many benefits to our environment. By recycling our materials, we create a healthier planet for ourselves and future generations.

Conserve natural resources: Recycling reduces the need to extract resources such as timber, water, and minerals for new products.

Climate change: According to the most recent EPA data, the recycling and composting of municipal solid waste (MSW or trash) saved over 193 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2018.

Energy savings: Recycling conserves energy. For example, recycling just 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours. To estimate how much energy you can save by recycling certain products, EPA developed the individual Waste Reduction Model (iWARM).

Waste and pollution reduction: Recycling diverts waste away from landfills and incinerators, which reduces the harmful effects of pollution and emissions.

Economy

EPA released significant findings on the economic benefits of the recycling industry with an update to the national Recycling Economic Information (REI) Study in 2020. This study analyzes the numbers of jobs, wages and tax revenues attributed to recycling. The study found that in a single year, recycling and reuse activities in the United States accounted for:

681,000 jobs,

$37.8 billion in wages, and

$5.5 billion in tax revenues.

This equates to 1.17 jobs per 1,000 tons of materials recycled and $65.23 in wages and $9.42 in tax revenue for every ton of materials recycled. For more information, check out the full report.

Community

Environmental Justice: Across the country, waste management facilities are concentrated in underserved communities, and they can have negative impacts on human health, property values, aesthetic and recreation values, and land productivity. Recycling provides these areas with a healthier and more sustainable alternative.

International: Waste generated in the United States also affects communities in other countries. Recycled materials are exported to some countries that are not able to manage those materials in an environmentally sound manner.

U.S. Recycling System Overview

The recycling process is made up of three steps that are repeated over and over again. This creates a continuous loop which is represented by the familiar chasing arrows recycling symbol. The three steps of the recycling process are described below.

Step 1: Collection and Processing

Businesses and consumers generate recyclables that are then collected by either a private hauler or government entity. There are several methods for collecting recyclables, including curbside collection, drop-off centers, and deposit or refund programs. Visit How do I recycle... Common Recyclables for information on specific materials.

After collection, recyclables are sent to a recovery facility to be sorted, cleaned, and processed into materials that can be used in manufacturing. Recyclables are bought and sold just like raw materials would be, and prices go up and down depending on supply and demand in the United States and around the world.

Step 2: Manufacturing

After processing, recyclables are made into new products at a recycling plant or similar facility. More and more of today's products are being manufactured with recycled content.

Recycled materials are also used in new ways such as recovered glass in asphalt to pave roads or recovered plastic in carpeting and park benches.

Step 3: Purchasing New Products Made from Recycled Materials

You help close the recycling loop by buying new products made from recycled materials. There are thousands of products that contain recycled content. When you go shopping, look for the following:

Products that can be easily recycled

Products that contain recycled content

Below are some of the terms used:

Recycled-content product - The product was manufactured with recycled materials either collected from a recycling program or from waste recovered during the normal manufacturing process. The label will sometimes include how much of the content came from recycled materials.

Post-consumer content - Very similar to recycled content, but the material comes only from recyclables collected from consumers or businesses through a recycling program.

Recyclable product - Products that can be collected, processed, and manufactured into new products after they have been used. These products do not necessarily contain recycled materials. Remember not all kinds of recyclables may be collected in your community, so be sure to check with your local recycling program before you buy.

Some common products you can find that are made with recycled content include the following:

Aluminum cans

Car bumpers

Carpeting

Cereal boxes

Comic books

Egg cartons

Glass containers

Laundry detergent bottles

Motor oil

Nails

Newspapers

Paper towels

Steel products

Trash bags

Challenges to Recycling System

While the benefits of recycling are clear, the current system still faces many challenges.

Many people are confused about what items can be recycled, where they can be recycled and how. This often leads to recyclables going in the trash or trash going in the recycling bin.

America's recycling infrastructure has not kept pace with today's waste stream. Communication between the manufacturers of new materials and products and the recycling industry needs to be improved to prepare for and optimally manage the recycling of new materials.

Domestic markets for recycled materials need to be strengthened in the United States. Historically, some of the recycled materials generated in the U.S. have been exported internationally. However, changing international policies have limited the export of materials. Improving communication among the different sectors of the recycling system is needed to strengthen the development of existing materials markets and to develop new innovative markets.

We need to better integrate recycled materials and end-of-life management into product and packaging designs.

More consistent measurement methodologies are necessary to improve recycling system performance. These more standardized metrics can then be used to create effective goals and track progress.

What is Being Done?

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: Transforming U.S. Recycling and Waste Management: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a historic investment in the health, equity, and resilience of American communities. With unprecedented funding to support state and local waste management infrastructure and recycling programs, EPA will improve health and safety and help establish and increase recycling programs nationwide.

National Recycling Strategy: EPA developed the National Recycling Strategy with a focus on advancing the national municipal solid waste recycling system. It identifies strategic objectives and actions to create a stronger, more resilient, and cost-effective recycling system.

Draft Strategy to Prevent Plastics Pollution: This strategy builds upon EPA's National Recycling Strategy and focuses on actions to reduce, reuse, collect, and capture plastic waste.

America Recycles Day: Every year on November 15, EPA reminds everyone of the importance and impact of recycling through education and outreach.

Basel Convention: The United States is a signatory to the Basel Convention, but has not yet become a Party to the Convention. The Basel Convention establishes standards for the transboundary movement of various types of waste.

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Provides the the basics steps involved for recycling

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Every year, the United States chucks nearly 40 percent of its food. Dana Gunders, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the author of The Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook, offers money- and planet-saving tips.

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Most people don't realize how much food they throw away every day - from uneaten leftovers to spoiled produce to parts of fruits and vegetables that could be eaten or repurposed.

One-third of all food in the United States goes uneaten. EPA estimates that in 2019, about 96 percent of households' wasted food ended up in landfills, combustion facilities, or down the drain to the sewer system. The remainder was composted.

Preventing food from going to waste is one of the easiest and most powerful actions you can take to save money and lower your climate change footprint by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and conserving natural resources.
On this page:

Save money by buying only what you need, eating what you buy, and avoiding throwing away food. The average family of four spends $1,500 each year on food that ends up uneaten.

Reduce your environmental and climate change footprint.

Conserve resources and energy. When food is wasted, the land, water, energy, and other inputs that are used in producing, processing, transporting, preparing, storing, and disposing the food are wasted as well.

More than 85 percent of GHG emissions from landfilled food waste result from activities prior to food entering a landfill, including the production, transport, processing, and distribution of food. Plus, when food decomposes in a landfill, methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted-and food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States

Ways to Prevent Wasted Food at Home

Planning, prepping, and storing food can help your household waste less food. Below are some tips to help you do just that:

Making a list with weekly meals in mind can save you money and time. If you only buy what you expect to use, you will be more likely to keep it fresh and use it all.

Keep a running list of meals and their ingredients that your household already enjoys - that way, you can easily choose, shop for, and prepare meals that you are likely to consume.

Look in your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry first to avoid buying food you already have. Make a list each week of what needs to be used up and plan upcoming meals around it.

Plan your meals for the week before you go shopping and buy only the things needed for those meals.

Make your shopping list based on how many meals you'll eat at home. Consider how often you will eat out, if you plan to eat frozen precooked meals, and if you will eat leftovers for any of your meals.

Include quantities on your shopping list noting how many meals you'll make with each item to avoid overbuying. For example: "salad greens - enough for two lunches".

Buying in large quantities (e.g., buy one, get one free deals) only saves money if you use all the food before it spoils.

Buying food from bulk bins can save you money and reduce food waste and packaging as you can purchase the amount of food you need as opposed to a pre-determined amount. When buying in bulk, remember to store food properly in airtight, labeled containers.

Purchase imperfect produce or upcycled products. Imperfect produce may have physical imperfections but is just as safe and nutritious and can sometimes be found at discounted prices. Upcycled products are made from ingredients that might have otherwise gone to waste.

Toolkit for Your Home and Your Community

The Food: Too Good to Waste Toolkit will help you figure out how much food is really going to waste in your home and what you can do to waste less. By making small shifts in how you shop for, prepare, and store food, you can save time and money. It can also keep the valuable resources used to produce and distribute food from going to waste!

Food: Too Good to Waste also contains an Implementation Guide that is designed to teach local governments and community organizations how to implement a Food: Too Good to Waste campaign in their community using the Toolkit.

If You Can't Reduce Wasted Food, Divert It From Landfills

Resources

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA):
Information for Consumers
Infographic- Easy Steps to Prevent Food Waste ( English, Chinese, Spanish)
Video - Tips to Reduce Food Waste at Home
Video- Plan Ahead to Reduce Food Waste ( English, Spanish)

Video- Serve Smart to Reduce Food Waste ( English, Spanish)

Video- Love Your Leftovers to Reduce Food Waste ( English, Spanish)
MyPlate- Meal Planning Refrigeration and Food Safety FoodKeeper App
U.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA):
How to Cut Food Waste and Maintain Food Safety
Date Labels on Packaged Foods & Infographic

Tips to Reduce Food Waste (including three infographics)
Food Waste Facts Infographic Animated Videos with Information on:

Tips to reduce food waste

Understanding date labels on packaged foods

The impact of food waste

Imperfect produce

Sources

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Most people don't realize how much food they throw away every day - from uneaten leftovers to spoiled produce to parts of fruits and vegetables that could be eaten or repurposed. One-third of all food in the United States goes uneaten.

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The world wastes more than $750 billion worth of food every year - 1.6 billion tons of food left in farm fields, sent to landfills, or otherwise scattered across the countryside, plus another seven million tons of fishery discards at sea. That waste has gotten a lot of attention lately, mostly in terms of human hunger.

Hardly anyone talks about what all that food waste is doing to wildlife.
But a growing body of evidence suggests that our casual attitude about wastemay be reshaping the way the natural world functions across much of the planet, inadvertently subsidizing some opportunistic predators and thus contributing to the decline of other species, including some that are threatened or endangered.

A new study in the journal Biological Conservation looks, for instance, at California's Monterey Bay, where the threatened steelhead trout population has declined by 80 to 90 percent over the past century. Efforts to restore the species along the Pacific Coast have focused on major initiatives like the recent demolition of a dam that had blocked access to critical steelhead breeding grounds on the Carmel River, which empties into Monterey Bay.

But a team of co-authors led by Ann-Marie Osterback, a marine ecologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz, suspects that garbage and fishery discards might also play an underrated part in the problem. The hypothesis is that local food wastes inadvertently subsidize Western gulls in the Monterrey Bay area, and these gulls in turn prey on the juvenile steelhead trout.

The dramatic decline in steelhead numbers would normally mean that fish-eating birds around Monterey Bay would have to move down the food chain to survive. That's what's happened to Brandt's cormorants and marbled murrelets, and their populations have declined as a result.

Animals have been picking up the food scraps forever, but nothing in history approaches the scale of modern food waste.

But according to Osterback, the number of gulls have doubled or quadrupled in different parts of the bay just since the 1980s - thanks to a steady diet of landfill garbage and fishery discards. Osterback and her co-authors found that each individual gull now eats less steelhead than in the past, but the combination of a greatly increased gull population and a severely reduced run of steelhead trout adds up to a dramatic rise in predation pressure. She estimates that the gulls may eat up to 30 percent of juvenile steelhead en route to the sea.

Likewise, yellow-legged gulls subsidized by food wastes in the western Mediterranean, threaten Auduoin's gulls, European storm petrels, and other vulnerable seabirds through increased predation pressure. Off the coast of Alaska, fishery-subsidized killer whales imperil near-threatened Steller sea lions. And on the western side of the Mojave Desert, common ravens and coyotes that feed on garbage from nearby communities are jeopardizing the recovery of the threatened desert tortoise.

"Ravens scavenge when refuse or carrion are available but they are also capable hunters," a study in Ecology found. The researchers put out 100 dummy models of juvenile desert tortoises and found that ravens attacked 29 of them over a two-month period. Other studies have linked subsidized ravens to the decline of such threatened or endangered species as marbled murrelets, California least terns, snowy plovers, San Clemente loggerhead shrikes, and sandhill cranes.

Animals have of course been picking up the food scraps we leave behind forever - or at least long enough to change the course of their evolution. That's how certain wolves evolved into domestic dogs. But nothing in the history of the planet approaches the scale of modern food waste, in farm fields, on streets and beaches, in landfills, and strewn behind fishing boats.

Controlling garbage is not new as a conservation tool, but it has sparked one of the nastiest fights in U.S. conservation.

This abundance of garbage is also a factor in the resurgence of brown bears (population 17,000) and wolves (population 11,000) in modern Europe. Garbage is also the main reason leopards have been able to adapt to living in and around major cities in India. They prey on other animals that scavenge from abundant garbage - dogs, pigs, goats, and rats - and they also feed directly on butchered carcasses discarded in the open.

Removing or controlling garbage is not new as a conservation tool. The U.S. National Park Service did it in the 1970s at Yellowstone National Park, closing dumps and ending the artificial feeding of bears there. But it also sparked one of the nastiest fights in the history of U.S. conservation, especially as the park service began killing or translocating "incorrigible" bears. Cut off from their familiar food sources, the grizzlies struggled and their population declined for a time. Gradually, though, the bears shifted to a more natural diet, moved away from the roads, and ultimately flourished. The Yellowstone grizzly population has roughly quadrupled since the end of artificial feeding in the 1970s, to about 700 bears in 2014.

Measures to address the garbage problem on a broader scale today will likely be at least as challenging. On the one hand, such measures can reduce populations of subsidized predators without the controversy caused by programs to kill or relocate nuisance animals. A study in France demonstrated that closing a dump led to a 49-percent decline in fertility of herring gulls, which are also opportunistic predators. Another study in the western Mediterranean found that a temporary moratorium on trawling had a dramatic impact on gull reproduction, by removing the discards that can otherwise make up as much as 73 percent of their diet.

But when the European Union was debating a ban on fishery discards in 2013, ecologists warned of "unforeseen knock-on consequences." They pointed out that 52 percent of seabird species worldwide now scavenge fishery discards to some degree. A ban would leave some species hungry, and some might turn to eating other bird species to survive.

The EU is currently moving ahead with its ban in three phases. Now in its second year, it's too soon to say how it is affecting seabirds. Daniel Oro, a fisheries ecologist at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies on Majorca, worries about the potential effect on the critically endangered Balearic shearwater, a seabird that frequently depends on fishery discards while rearing its young. "We are going to have smaller populations of Balearic shearwaters, that's very clear," said Oro. "Populations suffer a period of readapting to the new system. Many individuals are going to die, as happened with bears at Yellowstone."

But Oro also considers the cleanup essential. Before the closing of the only dump on Majorca, he said, researchers found that many of the birds there "were low-quality individuals. They had physical problems, they had lung problems, and other diseases that were not easily seen from the outside." The dump supported birds that natural selection would have weeded out in the wild.

Cleaning up our food waste mess and shifting wildlife populations back to natural resources increases competition and ultimately "benefits higher quality individuals," said Oro, "so that's good news." But, as at Yellowstone, he acknowledged, getting there will be painful.

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Unnatural Balance: How Food Waste Impacts World's Wildlife

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The world wastes more than $750 billion worth of food every year - 1.6 billion tons of food left in farm fields, sent to landfills, or otherwise scattered across the countryside, plus another seven million tons of fishery discards at sea. That waste has gotten a lot of attention lately, mostly in terms of human hunger.

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I've spent much of my working life digging into the problem of waste. One of the most important things I've learned is that solving our waste problem requires we look at the whole system, not just our own contribution to it. Sometimes that feels big and daunting, but it also offers many more opportunities to bring about positive changes.

Food waste is especially unforgivable. Millions of people are malnourished or going hungry, not only in developing countries but here in the US, while grocery stores, restaurants and homes are throwing away tons of perfectly edible and nutritious food every day. But the problem is not just the food that's wasted when leftovers go in the trash. It's also all of the greenhouse gas emissions, water, biodiversity loss and soil & air pollution that was generated to create that food only for it to be tossed away uneaten. To understand the full impact of wasting food, we have to look at where that food comes from and where the wasted food goes.

Let's unpack this a bit, starting with snack foods. Not so long ago, big food manufacturers discovered that palm oil could be used instead of butter or trans fats in a vast number of baked goods and other foods. This was very convenient as trans fats had started to get a bad name. You'll find palm oil (or one of its many aliases) in all kinds of food from Quaker granola bars, to Betty Crocker cake mix, to Fritos chips and Dunkin' Donuts.

Palm oil comes from tropical countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and parts of Africa. As we've tried to ditch the trans fats from our diets, demand for palm oil has shot up and these countries are now chopping down thousands of acres of lush tropical rainforests, to clear the way for palm tree plantations. Indonesia has lost over a quarter of its forest since 1990 - an area the size of Germany - which is a tragedy for the indigenous communities and tigers, orangutans and other endangered species which need the forest to survive. Companies have made progress towards buying more responsibly produced palm oil but deforestation still continues, so we should all be mindful of wasting food that may have cost more than just the dollars we paid for it. You can sign this petition to help encourage food companies to stop destroying rainforests for palm oil.

The supply chain for beef has similar problems. This time the trail of destruction leads to the Amazon rainforest. The cattle sector in Brazil has historically been the largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon as ancient forests are cleared to create grazing pastures for cows, that become steaks and burgers. Supermarkets are the largest market for Brazilian cattle products but globally few of them are willing to guarantee the beef they sell is free from deforestation, or violations of indigenous rights in the Amazon.

This isn't the only problem associated with meat production. Aside from the ethical concerns of raising animals for human consumption, livestock is the most significant contributor to nitrogen and phosphorus pollution of streams, rivers and coastal waters worldwide. They're also major emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the livestock sector is responsible for about 14% of global emissions, as much as the transportation sector. These problems show why choosing plant based foods over meat can help heal the planet.

The seafood industry is responsible for a different kind of damage. Tuna - one of the most popular sources of affordable protein - is often caught using longlines, as are swordfish and marlin. These are fishing lines over 60 miles long with thousands of hooks on to catch the fish. Longlining is notorious for high levels of 'bycatch', which is the catching of wildlife like threatened seabirds, turtles and sharks that weren't the intended prize. Around 100 million sharks, tens of thousands of sea turtles and tons of other marine life are killed every year. The destructive, inhumane and controversial practice of shark finning mainly takes place on tuna longline vessels. Longliners rarely return to land, and usually offload their catches to other vessels at sea. Out of sight of any kind of enforcement, they often operate illegally and in violation of human and workers' rights.

All this is to show that there are many good reasons to think twice about wasting perfectly good food. But I don't want to leave you with the feeling that our food system is doomed to destroy the planet. Some very real solutions already exist. Ecological farming uses modern techniques to farm with nature, not against it. Rotating crops and planting a diversity of options for example (rather than a single crop for many miles, like the oil palm plantations of Indonesia) plays a crucial role in food security, nutrition and human health as well as increasing resilience to erratic weather changes within a farm.

Phasing out chemical use (such as pesticides and herbicides) in food production is another example. Organic farms support 34% more plant, insect and animal species than conventional farms. For pollinators like bees, the number of different species was 50% higher on organic farms. This is of vital importance, since bees and other pollinators maximise global food production through their pollination services. These are just a few examples of how we can reduce the environmental impacts of food production, more of which are explained here.

We can all play an important role in making sure the food scraps we don't use aren't causing further damage to our planet. Rotting food waste that goes into landfill is a major source of climate polluting methane. Composting is a simple thing we can all do to help prevent this. You don't need a fancy compost bin to get started. I've seen neighborhood composting programs in India and the Philippines that use old barrels, or just long ditches with some worms in!

Whatever you're lucky enough to put on your plate each day, it's clear we all need to appreciate where it comes from and be motivated to make sure every last bite, scrap and rind goes to good use.

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I've spent much of my working life digging into the problem of waste. One of the most important things I've learned is that solving our waste problem requires we look at the whole system, not just our own contribution to it. Sometimes that feels big and daunting, but it also offers many more opportunities to bring about positive changes.

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Wasting 1.3 billion tons of food causes huge economic losses and a lot of needless hunger, but there are climate environmental issues deeply connected to food waste, according to a report from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

FAO's Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first study to analyze the impacts of global food wastage from an environmental perspective, looking specifically at its consequences for the climate, water and land use, and biodiversity.

Some key findings from the report:

The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases: making food wastage the third top GHG emitter after the U.S. and China.

Globally, the blue water footprint (i.e. the consumption of surface and groundwater resources) of food wastage is about 250 cubic kilometers (km3), which is equivalent to the annual water discharge of the Volga river, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva.

Produced but uneaten food occupies almost 1.4 billion hectares of land; representing nearly 30 percent of the world's agricultural land area.

Fifty-four percent of the world's food wastage occurs "upstream" during production, post-harvest handling and storage, according to FAO's study. About 46 percent of it happens "downstream," at the processing, distribution and consumption stages.

While it is difficult to estimate impacts on biodiversity at a global level, the report continues, "food wastage unduly compounds the negative externalities that mono-cropping and agriculture expansion into wild areas create on biodiversity loss, including mammals, birds, fish and amphibians."

Beyond its environmental impacts, the direct economic consequences to producers of food wastage (excluding fish and seafood) run about $750 billion annually, FAO's 63-page report estimates.

Achim Steiner, UN Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director, said UNEP and FAO have identified food wastage as a "major opportunity for economies everywhere to assist in a transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient and inclusive Green Economy."

The report, he continued, "underlines the multiple benefits that can be realized, in many cases through simple and thoughtful measures by, for example, households, retailers, restaurants, schools and businesses that can contribute to environmental sustainability, economic improvements, food security and the realization of the UN Secretary General's Zero Hunger Challenge."

UNEP and FAO are founding partners of the Think Eat Save - Reduce Your Foodprint campaign that was launched earlier in the year.

"All of us, farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers - must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can't," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

"We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day," he added in statement.

The global volume of food wastage is estimated to be 1.6 billion tons of "primary product equivalents," while the total wastage for the edible part of food is 1.3 billion tons. Compare that amount against total agricultural production (for food and non-food uses), which is about 6 billion tons.

That's enough to take one's breath and appetite away.

[Image: Food waste in France from the FAO Website}

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Food Waste Has a Big Impact on Climate, Water, Land and Biodiversity

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Wasting 1.3 billion tons of food causes huge economic losses and a lot of needless hunger, but there are climate environmental issues deeply connected to food waste, according to a report from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

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The Environmental Impact of Food Waste | Move For Hunger

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More than 40% of the food in the United States each year is wasted. Learn more about the causes of food waste, the impact of food waste on our environment, and what we can do to reduce food waste.

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Hong Kong is Drowning Due to the Amount of Garbage

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Hong Kong is Drowning Due to the Amount of Garbage

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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong boasts glittering skyscrapers, seamless transportation and billion dollar infrastructure projects, but it is struggling with a much more mundane problem: disposing of its trash.

The former British colony is grappling with a growing mountain of waste resulting from China's ban this year on imports of 24 types of unprocessed rubbish - part of an effort to upgrade its recycling industry and reduce pollution.

The Hong Kong government acknowledges its inability to cope with the problem, saying that it lacks the land to develop an effective recycling industry. Critics say, meanwhile, that the city has done too little to upgrade and develop its waste management system.

"Hong Kong is a rich city with third-world quality recycling," said Doug Woodring, founder and managing director of Ocean Recovery Alliance, a Hong Kong-based non-government organization. "It has been too easy to send unprocessed waste to China."

Until last year, Hong Kong exported over 90 percent of its recyclables to China. That all changed at the end of 2017 as the effects of the Chinese ban - which included Hong Kong despite its status as a special administrative region of China - started to be felt around the world.

Huge mountains of old newspapers, cardboard and office scrap have piled up on Hong Kong's docks over the past few months while plastic waste has been dumped into the landfills.

A city of more than 7 million people, Hong Kong deposits around two thirds of its waste into landfills - 5.6 million tonnes annually. Little is recycled.

Hong Kong's deputy director for environmental protection, Vicki Kwok, said in an interview that the densely populated city was unable to absorb all the recyclables due to a lack of available land in one of the world's most expensive property markets.

"We have to rely on exports and that makes us more susceptible, compared to other jurisdictions, to external market factors," she said.

Kwok said the government had announced multiple measures over the past few months to stymie the flow of garbage, including funding support to help upgrade local recyclers, and was prioritizing waste reduction at the source by appealing to businesses and consumers.

Green groups say the measures will do little to alleviate pressure on Hong Kong as the local recycling industry is unable to process all the waste that used to be sent to China.

Woodring said the government was too reliant on expanding landfills as a means of disposing of trash rather than reallocating land for waste management.

"Hong Kong has the capability to build processing plants," he said, referring to recycling. "There is plenty of land. The land has just been misused and misallocated."

An average Hong Kong resident throws away around 1.4 kilograms daily, more than double that of Asian cities such as Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei, which have implemented extensive recycling programs, according to the government.

Food waste, which accounts for the bulk of total waste generated, amounts to some 3,600 tonnes each day - the equivalent of 300 double-decker buses.

The government is aiming to open a facility this year that would convert food waste into energy and usable resources. However, the total recycling capacity will be a maximum of 200 tonnes daily while a second phase starting operations in 2021 will process a maximum of 300 tonnes per day.

Kwok said the government was planning to expand three active landfills set to reach capacity starting next year.

Hong Kong, which has already filled up 13 landfills in its history, is planning to start charging consumers for what they throw out but implementation is unlikely to take effect in the coming two years, the government has said.

Landfill waste is typically highly toxic and can severely damage surrounding ecosystems. The planned expansion of the landfills is likely to further impact a growing number of residents in affected areas, green groups have said.

In the meantime, municipal waste continues to rise unabatedly, surging 80 percent over the past 30 years, while Hong Kong's population has grown 36 percent, according to the government.

The environmental group Green Earth estimates that Hong Kong throws 5 million plastic bottles into landfills each day.

Edwin Lau, executive director of Green Earth, said the government needed to put in resources to subsidize and manage the industry directly.

Hong Kong's recycling industry is dominated by private players that operate in a piecemeal fashion with overlapping logistics.

"The government has a role to tackle social issues such as the waste management issue," he said. "Just expanding the landfills to cope with more waste, that is really backward thinking."

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Hong Kong drowning in waste as China rubbish ban takes toll

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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong boasts glittering skyscrapers, seamless transportation and billion dollar infrastructure projects, but it is struggling with a much more mundane problem: disposing of its trash. The former British colony is grappling with a growing mountain of waste resulting from China's ban this year on imports of 24 types of unprocessed rubbish - part of an effort to upgrade its recycling industry and reduce pollution.

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We can get indignant every time another report reminds us that 1% of the world's population owns as much wealth as the remaining 99%. But there is at least one area in which many of us belong to a privileged minority: food waste.

Today is Food Waste Prevention Day in Italy. FAO figures continue to paint a pitiless picture of the current situation: Western consumers throw away around 222 million tons of food every year, almost as much as the entire food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons).

While in developing countries, 40% of losses take place at the start of the supply chain, during harvesting and processing, in industrialized countries an even larger percentage is lost between distribution and final consumption. This second category of waste is more problematic because it means even more labor, energy and resources have been invested in the food, so the environmental and economic impact of their squandering is even higher.

According to a new FAO study, "Towards integrating production and consumption to reduce consumer food waste in developed countries", what we are seeing is a symptomatic problem, the consequence of a food production model in which accumulation, consumerism, competition and undercutting are encouraged at every level. Is there a way out? Yes, but not within this mechanism based on the overexploitation of resources by producers and of desires by consumers.

The UN has placed the halving of waste among its sustainable development goals (SDGs) for 2030. Even a reduction of current waste by a quarter would be enough to provide food for the world's 870 million hungry people.

But at a European level, during negotiations on the Waste Framework Directive, the member states did not feel it necessary to include obligatory objectives for the reduction of food waste, even though they are committed to helping reach the SDGs.

Political decision-makers might be struggling to make real commitments in the war against waste, but each of us can contribute to fighting the flaws in the current food system on a daily basis: with small, frequent shops, by drawing up detailed lists of what we actually need and by giving our children a proper food education.

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Today is Food Waste Prevention Day in Italy. FAO figures continue to paint a pitiless picture of the current situation: Western consumers throw away around 222 million tons of food every year, almost as much as the entire food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons).

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How this year's Super Bowl stadium managed to dramatically reduce waste

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How this year's Super Bowl stadium managed to dramatically reduce waste

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On Monday, hundreds of stadium employees, food vendors, sustainability experts and volunteers worked together to sort about 60 tons of waste, marking it to be recycled, composted or reused.

The stadium had set a goal for itself to put on a "Zero Waste" Super Bowl -- meaning that 90% of all waste generated on Super Bowl Sunday stays out of landfills. The remaining 10% will be sent to a waste-to-energy incineration plant where it will be burned to create electricity.

Bradley Vogel, the stadium's sustainability coordinator, stood over a small mountain of trash bags filled with empty beer cups and cheese-stained nacho trays, and placed a sign in the middle designating it ready for sorting. The average Vikings game generates about 40 tons of waste, he said, but the Super Bowl brings in more sales and more trash.

"This is my dream job," he said as he supervised a team of 10 sorters sifting through the garbage bags.

"I'm very confident we will at least get very close to 90%," said Vogel, though it will be a few days before the sorting is finished and they'll know for certain how close the stadium came to meeting its goal.

Vogel is one of the people leading the push to make US Bank Stadium the first permanent "Zero Waste" stadium in the NFL. He says other stadiums may claim to be "Zero Waste" but are not, because they send more than 10% of their waste for incineration.

The NFL says it's a big priority to hold more "Zero Waste" Super Bowls in the future, and for the stadiums to commit to implementing "Zero Waste" policies in the long term. But the infrastructure at the host stadium is key.

"Most stadiums won't try and do this when they're first built," Vogel said. "They just want to get the operations down... they want to make sure they get the food out before they worry about what happens on the back end."

The 2015 Super Bowl in Phoenix succeeded in diverting 90% of its waste from landfills, but didn't manage to maintain that standard after the day itself, NFL environmental director Jack Groh says.

The needed infrastructure wasn't in place to properly turn food waste, cups and those grease-stained pizza boxes into compost, which can then be used in fertilizing soil.

"Each year we kind of start with an empty slate and look at each community," he said.

In Atlanta, which will host next year's Super Bowl, there isn't a commercial composting facility within a reasonable distance of the stadium, Groh said.

Minneapolis is already known for having stronger sustainability programs than many other large cities, but the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Hennepin County and the city all supported and pushed for the effort, Vogel said. "Since (the stadium) is partly publicly funded, they wanted it to be sustainable."

About 50,000 thousand Minneapolis homes participate in a composting program, according to the Hennepin Recovery Energy Center. "That's probably better than most other (similar-sized) US cities," says Dave Newport, director of the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"All our other stadiums in Minneapolis are super sustainable," Vogel said. "Target Field, where the Twins play, has a monthly diversion rate of around 70%."

"This is a whole new level for us and the stadium," Groh said.

Back in September, US Bank Stadium was only diverting about 24% of its waste, Vogel said. Increasing the waste diversion rate in such a short period of time isn't always easy. Convincing Aramark to spend more money on compostable cups and food items was a huge part of the process. Getting the food vendor and Pepsi on board was also key to the putting the plan into place.

Vogel is convinced that going "Zero Waste" will save money in the long run. "A lot of our start-up costs are one-time purchases, like our organics compactor." He says the reduction in trash hauling payments will eventually cut the stadium's costs by as much as half.

Of equal importance will be continuing to educate and convince the public. Pepsico brought in hundreds of volunteers, some of them paid, to monitor every waste, recycling and composting bin in the entire stadium during the Super Bowl to help fans find the right bins to throw away their trash.

One of those volunteers, Steven Whiting, came with about a dozen other students from the University of Louisville. "Being part of trying to make this stadium realize 90% waste diversion is pretty exciting," he said.

Getting enough of the general public excited about it will also be a factor in whether fans will help permanently make the stadium a "Zero Waste" facility.

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how this year's super bowl managed to dramatically reduce waste - cnn

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How this year's Super Bowl stadium made a play to dramatically reduce waste

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On Monday, hundreds of stadium employees, food vendors, sustainability experts and volunteers worked together to sort about 60 tons of waste, marking it to be recycled, composted or reused. The stadium had set a goal for itself to put on a "Zero Waste" Super Bowl -- meaning that 90% of all waste generated on Super Bowl Sunday stays out of landfills.

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Food Rescue US’ App Connects Hungry People with Fresh Food

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Food Rescue US’ App Connects Hungry People with Fresh Food

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Kevin Mullins co-founded Community Plates, now known as Food Rescue US (FRUS), in 2011 to help families across the nation access fresh food otherwise destined for the landfill. Now serving as CEO, Mullins' passion for helping solve America's hunger and food waste crisis was inspired by the work of his own children, who collected lunches to send home as dinner to friends in need.

Food Rescue US takes excess fresh food from different industry sources and delivers them to food insecure families via an online app. The program connects volunteer food rescuers with receiving agencies and food donors. Its streamlined scheduling system offers participants the option to pick-up, drop-off, or receive fresh food at their convenience, alleviating the rigidity of normal food rescue schedules.

Food Tank spoke with Mullins about the root of America's food insecurity, excess food waste, and how FRUS hopes to use technology and creativity to combat both.
Food Tank (FT): What does it mean to be food insecure? FT: One of your organization's core values is creativity. Which current and future strategic efforts are going towards building a creative organization? Why is this important to the Food Rescue US identity?
Kevin Mullins (KM): There's the official definition and then there is the one that drives our work. Officially, food insecurity is defined as "the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food." FRUS has personalized that a bit. We believe food insecurity is when someone is unable to provide for themselves or their families the food they need to live healthily.

KM: Creativity was core to our founding. Our co-founder, Jeff Schacher, realized an opportunity to reimagine what it looks like to feed hungry people. Instead of inserting new food into the system, we could take advantage of the abundance of existing food. Jeff said, "We don't have a food shortage in the U.S., we have a food logistics problem." We have to be creative and tell the stories of the American hungry without resorting to the same images and worn out language usually attributed to that narrative in order to engage communities to care for each other without resorting to guilt and manipulation.
FT: Why is there so much food waste in the restaurant and grocery industry? In addition to rescuing excess waste, how is Food Rescue US helping to deal with the root cause of the issue?
Creativity drives the future of our current tech platform. While the app successfully creates food rescue communities and engages thousands in the cause, it is just one possible solution. If we want to bring an end to hunger in America, we will have to consistently reimagine the solutions necessary. Although we will never be a start-up again, we want to retain that energy and constantly challenge ourselves to look for creative, different solutions.

We continuously explore new partnerships, looking for creative ways to further our mission. We recently partnered with Zipcar in Washington, D.C., and hope to expand that partnership in 2018. Zipcar offers a path to action for non-car owning volunteers, allowing them to join the fight against hunger in their own communities.
FT: How does the dignity of choice, giving food recipients the option to eat fresh and healthy foods, create change in the food system?
KM: It's a combination of factors. Grocery stores and restaurants generate waste differently. One primary factor, especially in the grocery industry, is the American addiction to perfect looking food and the aesthetic of the well-stocked store. On the one hand, the majority of American shoppers pass over any blemished or otherwise imperfect food, and on the other, many only want to shop at stores that have completely stocked (or overstocked) shelves.
FT: Your award-winning Food Rescue US app has helped FRUS and participating volunteers rescue millions of meals. How does the app work? What upgrades do you have in mind to continue or improve the efficacy of the technology?
A second factor in the grocery industry is the fallacy of sell-by and expiration dates. This marketing-related tragedy has been well documented lately. On average, restaurants waste less food, but similar to farming, frequently over-prepare or over-purchase food to ensure they have enough product to feed their customers. The root of the issue is that this country doesn't truly value food. FRUS technology ensures available food is valued all the way through its life-cycle.

KM: Part of our broken food system is the fact that those who are most the most vulnerable are also the most likely to eat unhealthy food. The food insecure population is more likely to eat things from boxes and cans than the food secure population. They aren't happy about it, and they aren't healthy because of it. Our focus on the dignity of choice is more about changing that reality than it is anything else.
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
KM: The Food Rescue US app provides an on-demand portal for all three essential parts of the food recovery system. Our technology makes it simple for a food donor to provide the necessary information, ensuring all available food can go to feeding those in need. On average, it takes about two minutes for our food rescuers, the lifeblood of the platform, to respond. In addition, we can inform our donors of how many meals they have provided to those in need.

Nationally, over 2,200 registered volunteers have rescued and delivered 23.1 million meals to people in need. This represents about 15,740 metric tons (34.7 million pounds) of food saved from the landfill, conservatively valued at US$59 million. Volunteers can input their scheduling preferences into the app, access a schedule showing all food rescuers available in their area, and review their food rescue stats.

Our food rescuers deliver food to third-users, awesome receiving agencies around the country that provide food to the food insecure population through soup kitchens and food pantries. The app allows receiving agencies to share important information like what kinds of food they can use and when.

Our future app developments are focused on making the app more accessible and more engaging to make our donation streams as efficient and effective as possible. We are especially interested in the idea of the final mile. How can we get the food as close as possible to where food insecure people live and at the exact right times?

Join the Conversation:

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Food Rescue US uses tech to save food and feed the hungry.

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Kevin Mullins co-founded Community Plates, now known as Food Rescue US (FRUS), in 2011 to help families across the nation access fresh food otherwise destined for the landfill. Now serving as CEO, Mullins' passion for helping solve America's hunger and food waste crisis was inspired by the work of his own children, who collected lunches to send home as dinner to friends in need.

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New Guide Helps Reduce Retail Food Waste at Scale

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New Guide Helps Reduce Retail Food Waste at Scale

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Food waste represents a US$18.2 billion opportunity for grocery retailers in the United States, according to the Retail Food Waste Action Guide. Launched by ReFED, a coalition of business, nonprofit, foundation, and government leaders committed to reducing food waste in the U.S., and developed in partnership with the Food Waste Reduction Alliance (FWRA), the guide is designed to help retail businesses implement effective food waste reduction solutions and strategies.

"The Guide is undoubtedly an important new tool in retailers' efforts to reduce food waste across the entire supply chain," says Andrew Harig, senior director of sustainability, tax, and trade with the Food Marketing Institute, on behalf of FWRA. "[It] offers a fresh opportunity for companies already deeply engaged on the issue of food waste, as well as those just starting out, to take a 360-degree view of their operations in search of new approaches and solutions."

The Retail Food Waste Action Guide was created with input from more than 30 expert contributors, including major retailers such as Ahold Delhaize USA, Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods, and industry and nonprofit organizations such as Feeding America and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

The guide aims to provide an overview of national food waste data and statistics and the retail industry's opportunity to address waste while improving business outcomes. It also presents a "Solutions Landscape" of proven prevention, recovery, and recycling strategies to help the industry prioritize and accelerate waste reduction activities.

Each solution has been evaluated along six dimensions: profit potential, implementation effort, the extent of upfront capital investment required, industry prevalence, diversion potential, and societal economic value. The guide prioritizes prevention solutions first, then recovery, and finally recycling, to maximize the economic, social, and environmental benefits of food waste strategies.

"We're seeing a major trend of retailers increasing focus on food waste," explains Chris Cochran, Executive Director of ReFED. " ReFED is partnering with retailers to put these waste solutions into action."

According to the guide, retailers are beginning to recognize the financial and reputational value of addressing and reducing food waste in their operations. For example, three of the top ten U.S. grocery retailers-Ahold Delhaize, Kroger, and Walmart-have set a public zero food waste-to-landfill goal. And an increasing number of retailers are joining food waste reduction coalitions and organizations such as the International Consumer Goods Forum, Champions 12.3, and United States Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions.

"There is a major opportunity for the retail industry to lead national food waste reduction initiatives," write the authors. "The Retail Food Waste Action Guide calls upon every retail business in the U.S. to rise to the challenge and take part in turning food waste from a costly burden into a valuable resource."

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Food Waste: A US$18 billion Opportunity for Retailers

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Food waste represents a US$18.2 billion opportunity for grocery retailers in the United States, according to the Retail Food Waste Action Guide. Launched by ReFED, a coalition of business, nonprofit, foundation, and government leaders committed to reducing food waste in the U.S., and developed in partnership with the Food Waste Reduction Alliance (FWRA), the guide is designed to help retail businesses implement effective food waste reduction solutions and strategies.

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Feeding America Teams with DoorDash to Combat Food Waste

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Feeding America Teams with DoorDash to Combat Food Waste

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Two U.S.-based companies are looking to combine their expertise in delivering meals and identifying those who need them to help combat both hunger and the food waste issues across the country.

The recently announced DoorDash and Feeding America initiative is focused on tackling the massive problem of food waste and hunger. Consumer-facing foodservice businesses offer one of the most significant opportunities to rescue more food. It is where 50 billion of the 72 billion pounds of food wasted every year comes from.

The biggest barrier to donation, according to 78 percent of restaurants in the U.S., is not having the logistical means for delivering to food banks and shelters. This pilot program is aimed to rescue food from restaurants that would otherwise become waste.

"Our mission is to deliver good by connecting people and possibility, which is something that has always been intrinsic to our internal culture," says Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash. "We wanted to bring this to life externally, and earlier this month, we unveiled a renewed brand strategy around the concept of 'delivering good.'"

One of the first ways DoorDash started bringing the delivering good concept to fruition is through Project DASH, a company-wide initiative that focuses on tackling the massive problem of food waste and hunger.

"What started as a hackathon, piloting in New York City and Los Angeles, started gaining momentum, and that is where the partnership with Feeding America comes into play," says Xu. "The partnership is a natural extension of DoorDash's core values and taps our logistical expertise and expansive network of restaurants to expand Feeding America's food rescue efforts."

Founded in 2013, DoorDash is a San Francisco-based technology company that connects customers with their favorite local and national restaurants in more than 600 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

"DoorDash had been running a pilot program using their drivers to deliver donated product to recipient agencies, but they were having issues identifying and managing a roster of those agencies," says Justin Block, director of retail information services for Chicago-based Feeding America. "They reached out when they learned our network had been rescuing food for decades and our MealConnect platform could seamlessly supply that missing information for them."

Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief organization in the U.S. Through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, the organization provides meals to more than 46 million people each year.

"By uniting the MealConnect and DoorDash platforms, we are creating a seamless solution for donors and recipient agencies that will allow more food to be rescued and served to clients quickly," says Block. "At the consumer-facing level, more than 50 million pounds of food ends up in landfills. Innovative partnerships like this will help put a greater portion of the wholesome surplus food on the tables of people who need it most."

DoorDash will introduce a pilot program that pairs the company's logistical platform with Feeding America's free donation website or smartphone application called MealConnect. Food businesses interested in donating extra meals or inventory will post it on the app.

MealConnect will identify the best-suited agency for that donation and send over details of the donation-where the donor is located, where the recipient is located, what the product is, how it is packaged and how much is available-to DoorDash. The DoorDash Drive platform will then notify its drivers about the opportunity, where it will be accepted and executed.

"DoorDash is dedicating engineering resources to connect DoorDash Drive, our white glove fulfillment and catering service, with MealConnect's API," says Xu. "Through MealConnect, we will provide last-mile delivery expertise and support between restaurants, smaller shelters and food banks, adding a valuable transportation component to the MealConnect platform. This allows our restaurant partners to request a Dasher to pick up and donate their unused food to a local food bank or soup kitchen partnered with Feeding America."

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Feeding America Teams with DoorDash to Combat Food Waste

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Two U.S.-based companies are looking to combine their expertise in delivering meals and identifying those who need them to help combat both hunger and the food waste issues across the country. The recently announced DoorDash and Feeding America initiative is focused on tackling the massive problem of food waste and hunger.