COMMENTARY

Wasted!

A large portion of food produced globally is never eaten, but what can we do about it?

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette food waste illustration.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette food waste illustration.

Children raised in the 1960s were told to clean their plates and think about starving children in Africa.

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Special to the Democrat-Gazette/JANET B. CARSON

Read Admire, founder of Urban Food Loop, adds food waste collected from subscribers to the big compost heap at Heifer International’s Heifer Urban Farm. The Food Loop returns compost to gardening consumers and shares the excess with urban gardens.

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette/JANET B. CARSON

Urban Food Loop collects food waste from consumers, adds it to restaurant waste to create compost, and, when it’s ready, shares the compost with consumers and urban gardens.

photo

Special to the Democrat-Gazette/JANET B. CARSON

Urban Food Loop subscribers get a crock like this for kitchen scraps as well as 5-gallon buckets to set outdoors for collection by the compost-making business.

Offers to send the pickled beets or cooked cauliflower to those in need were not met with the same sincerity with which they were given. That being said, we did not waste food. Our parents and grandparents were products of the Depression and "waste not, want not" was a mantra. This didn't just apply to food. We took care of everything we owned and valued what we had.

Times have changed.

Children today, or adults for that matter, don't have to eat everything on their plates -- often we are encouraged not to. Ordering huge quantities of food at restaurants and leaving half of it behind is commonplace. According to a recent report from the World Resources Institute, about one-third of all food produced worldwide gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.

It is mind-boggling that, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of the food supply in the United States is not eaten -- it is thrown away, put down the garbage disposal or never harvested. Meanwhile, one in eight American families struggles to put food on the table.

Something is just wrong with that scenario.

When I was a child, milk was delivered to our door in glass bottles. The milkman took back the empty bottles to be reused. The few times we had soda, it came in bottles that also were returned to the store. Appliances were built to last a lifetime. Now our milk is in disposable plastic; soda is in cans or plastic bottles, and if an appliance lasts 10 years, we celebrate.

The Aug. 1, 1955, issue of Life magazine featured an article on "Throwaway Living." It claimed that the height of modern living was to use something once and then throw it away. That was not seen as wasteful: It was considered modern, and it was easy and convenient.

Sixty-two years later, we live in a fast-paced world where convenience is key and disposable is considered normal.

Before the 20th century, the amount of waste generated by a household was relatively small. Household waste was often buried in the garden or burned. As cities and populations grew, refuse became a problem. Landfills began to be built in the 1920s with little regulation or thought about long-term effects. In 1959, the American Society of Civil Engineers published a guide to landfills recommending compacting the trash and layering it with soil to guard against odor.

Today, all landfills are regulated by federal and state laws. In 1965 the Solid Waste Disposal Act was passed by

Congress, recognizing that trash was becoming a national concern. The federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 was enacted to protect human health and the environment. Working through the states, it regulates the management of hazardous waste, nonhazardous wastes, medical wastes and underground storage tanks.

R-R-R

While we have continued to embrace disposability, today there is a huge emphasis on the three R's -- reduce, reuse and recycle. There are more than 10,000 recycling centers nationwide and at least 4,000 curbside collection programs.

Curbside recycling of glass, paper, aluminum and plastic is commonplace. Yard waste is now picked up by most local municipalities, and so, overall, a lot less goes into landfills. Trash is a big business and an ever growing one.

FROM FARM TO LANDFILL?

As Americans continue to generate large volumes of trash, the next frontier for recycling is food waste.

Many consumers feel good that they are doing their part for the environment by recycling cardboard and aluminum, but they don't give a thought to all the food that is thrown away. Organic waste is the second highest component of American landfills.

Food recycling programs are beginning to appear in cities and states across the country. Recycling food is not commonplace, nor it is inexpensive or easy on a large scale, and yet communities across the country are looking at feasible options.

Wal-Mart and Sam's Club began working with Quest Recycling Services in 2009 to recycle food waste into animal feed or compost and also to recycle used cooking oil into biofuel or animal feed and unsold meat and seafood into animal feed additives.

In 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York state had laws requiring certain businesses to separate food waste from regular trash, and states such as Vermont have similar plans to require food recycling by 2020.

ARKANSAS GETS TO WORK

What is being done in Arkansas? Many individual nonprofits and organizations are working to promote "sustainability," with community gardens, food recovery and hunger relief programs. They are scattered all over the state with no big umbrella organization that coordinates all efforts, but good things are happening.

The Arkansas Sustainability Network is a nonprofit educational organization begun in 2006 whose mission is to develop more sustainable communities. Based in Little Rock, it coordinates an online farmers market and sponsors garden projects.

Also, the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance and the Society of St. Andrew (SoSA) have joined to form a gleaning network within the state. Gleaning is the practice of hand-gathering crops left after harvest. The alliance and SoSA volunteers glean fields and orchards for produce donated by growers. The produce is then given to Feeding America-member food banks, pantries, soup kitchens and shelters that feed or distribute food to their neighbors in need.

The alliance and its members serve more than 900 hunger relief organizations in all 75 Arkansas counties. Since the program began, more than 8.5 million pounds of fresh produce have been gleaned from Arkansas fields, the alliance says.

Within the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, the Center for Agricultural and Rural Sustainability has a broad responsibility in research, teaching and extension outreach. The projects carried out by the center faculty are diverse, covering all major areas of agricultural production, including specialty crops and local foods. This work supports the agricultural industries and rural communities to build sustainable, "green" agriculture in the state.

CURBSIDE COMPOSTING

In July, the Arkansas Recycling Coalition held a workshop in central Arkansas to share ideas on reducing food waste. Among them, composting at home is recommended. While there are many people composting, many more don't have the time or the inclination to do so.

In San Francisco's curbside recycling program, 600 tons a week of compostable material is picked up each day. But few American cities are offering such service. Private door-to-door composting companies are popping up all over the country from Compost Cab in Washington to Compost Now in North Carolina.

At least one company in central Arkansas offers to pick up consumer food waste once a week and give customers compost in return.

The Urban Food Loop, owned by Read Admire and Claire Hodgson, has partnered with Heifer International, securing a site on the Heifer Urban Farm behind Heifer Village in downtown Little Rock where they are composting food waste. Customers in Little Rock and surrounding areas can subscribe to this service.

Subscribers are given a crock to keep in their kitchens and one or two 5-gallon plastic buckets with secure lids to keep outdoors. Instead of throwing away the food that goes bad or is not eaten, or putting it down the disposal, customers pay to have it turned into reusable compost.

Food scraps are collected in the buckets all week, everything from vegetables and baked goods to meat and cheese. Once a week, the full plastic buckets are picked up outside your door and replaced with clean ones.

The waste is mixed with leaves and straw, whey from Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, coffee grounds from a local coffee business and fruit pulp from a smoothie restaurant. The end results are pretty impressive compost. Once a year, the business will deliver up to 10 bags of the compost that is produced. If customers don't garden, Urban Food Loop will gladly donate their share of the compost to a community garden.

Subscription is $31 a month. Company statistics suggest customers of such door-to-door composting companies send one-third less trash to landfills.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

One door-to-door program for the whole state is not enough, but it is a step in the right direction. Change doesn't happen overnight. There are a lot of foodies and locavores who are really getting into the "local food" movement and working on ways to balance food production, distribution and waste, but many of the conferences and conversations are preaching to the choir -- people already engaged and involved.

It is time to move beyond the dedicated few and reach out to the sporadically motivated and vaguely concerned: It's time to create a network of food citizens.

If everyone does just a little, it will make a difference. One small step will lead to bigger things.

The best way to manage food waste is to not produce it. Besides composting, other strategies are to buy only what you need and learn how to store it and cook it properly.

If there are leftovers, use or repurpose them.

Janet B. Carson is a horticulture specialist for the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. Write to her at 2301 S. University Ave., Little Rock, Ark. 72204 or email her at

jcarson@arkansasonline.com

HomeStyle on 01/21/2017

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