- Author: Alec Rosenberg
Everyone was dusty, tired and ready to relax. Pizza dinner had just ended on the third night of outdoor education in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but it wasn’t quite time to go.
A counselor brought out a bucket containing all of the food leftovers from the plates of the sixth graders, their teachers, naturalists and parent chaperones. It was empty. The crowd cheered: The group had met its goal of zero waste.
The camp made me think about how much food we throw away on a regular basis. Americans waste almost 27 percent of all the food produced in the United States each year. That’s the equivalent of around one pound of food a day for each American.
How can we do better? At the camp, they...
- Author: Pam Devine
What got me started on this contribution is a book I recently read, called Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. It photo-chronicles what an average family from different regions around the world eats in a week. Fascinating reading, but not the topic of this blog, just the inspiration.
I’m writing about food waste, specifically fresh fruits and vegetables. First let’s look at the facts. In a 2011 report commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization, it was found that “Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tons — gets lost or wasted.”
The report does distinguish between loss and waste,...