Don't waste your food!
I find articles like this one a GREAT reminder
to be more conscious of my actions.
Thank You Democrat & Chronicle!
One of the latest trends in sustainability among both consumers and businesses is to cut the waste, through both better planning and finding alternative uses for rotten food.
Two of Monroe County's largest food handlers —Wegmans Food Markets Inc. and Foodlink — are on board and have begun pilot projects to further reduce food waste.
Donations and diversions
Wegmans spokeswoman Jo Natale said the company has always been mindful of reducing food waste.
The company donates 16 million pounds of food annually, 11 million pounds of which is perishable foods from the bakery, produce and dairy categories.
In 2012, Wegmans also diverted 5.9 million pounds of food, which is more than double the amount from the previous year. Diversion means selling or sending food to farmers to be used as animal feed or to companies that will compost or use the waste to make products like fuel and fertilizers.
"About half our stores today engage in one form of (diversion) or another. Our goal is to grow that to 100 percent," Natale said.
The chain launched a pilot program in a handful of Rochester-area stores as well as the Next Door By Wegmans restaurant in Pittsford. All food scraps are collected throughout the stores in four-wheeled totes. The waste is trucked to Synergy Biogas LLC, the state's largest anaerobic biodigester in Covington, Wyoming County. Synergy processes that food waste with dairy manure into methane, which is then used to fuel an engine that generates electricity.
Wegmans sustainability coordinator Jason Wadsworth said that while kinks in the system are being worked out with Synergy, the company's food waste is being made into farm fertilizer in Wyoming County as well as being used as farm compost in Wayne County.
"Regardless where the material is sent ... it will be better than the landfill," he said via email.
Wegmans plans to roll out the program in all its Rochester-area stores later this year.
Wegmans is one of several supermarket chains taking part in the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, a cross-sector industry initiative started in 2011 by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Food Marketing Institute and the National Restaurant Association. FWRA's goals are to reduce overall food waste, increase the amount of safe, edible food donated to the needy and divert non-edible food scraps away from landfills.
'Food rescue'
The way Jeanette Baptiste, chief operating officer at Foodlink, the region's primary foodbank distributor, sees it, there is "good bad" food and "bad bad" food. The "bad bad" food is the spoiled food that cannot be eaten. The "good bad food" is perfectly safe and nutritious, but for one reason or another cannot be sold through normal channels.
Foodlink also wants that "good bad" supply to be even healthier, with more fresh fruits and vegetables, Baptiste said. Last year, Foodlink moved 3 million pounds of fresh produce, up from 1 million pounds in 2012.
Partnerships with companies like Wegmans are one way to achieve that goal, but increasingly, food relief agencies are also turning to farms.
According to the hunger relief charity Feeding America, more than 6 billion pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables are never harvested or brought to market. Fluctuations in market prices and weather, labor shortages and selective harvesting practices mean 6 percent to 8 percent of food that is planted every year is not eaten, said Bob Branham of the Produce Capture Institute, part of the Feeding American network.
This month, Foodlink is one of five organizations of its kind in the nation to embark on a pilot program with the institute to learn how it can take advantage of this largely underutilized source of healthy food. In this region, that mostly means apples, beans, corn, cabbage, potatoes, onions, squash and other vegetables.
"Produce is the untapped frontier for food rescue," said Baptiste, who believes that 100 million pounds of regional food is tilled back into the soil.
Given the state's agricultural bounty, she sees countless opportunities to glean abandoned food or pay the farms to harvest food when they have no other market.
It has been working to remove the roadblocks that make fresh produce difficult to distribute. It has run grants to help community pantries purchase refrigeration and offers cooking classes with clients so they can introduce unfamiliar foods to the end users.
"In our region, there is no reason to be food insecure," she says.
Making use of methane
The county's Mill Seat Landfill in Riga collects the methane created by garbage and converts it to electricity for the landfill power plant. The same happens at the High Acres Landfill in Perinton.
Still Mike Garland, Monroe County's environmental services commissioner, encourages food waste diversion. Food waste makes up about 9 percent to 10 percent of municipal solid waste going to Mill Seat.
Garland said the county is still trying to increase participation in paper and plastic recycling, so no particular food waste reduction programs are on the horizon.
However, Garland said, if and when the county does, it would make more sense to start first on an institutional level such as with jails or hospitals.
KMILTNER@DemocratandChronicle.com
Food waste by the numbers
50: The percentage increase in American food waste since the 1970s.
20: The per capita number of wasted food pounds per month in the U.S. food supply, taking into account all links of the food chain.
10: The multiplying factor that compares food waste by the average U.S. consumer compared to a consumer in Asia.
40: The percentage of food produced in the U.S. that ends up not being eaten.
23: The percentage of total U.S. methane emissions caused by decomposing food.
$165 billion: The annual value (in dollars) of wasted food in the U.S.
$1,350 to $2,275: The amount that food waste costs an average household of four each year.
