Intro: More than 40 percent of all food produced in America is not eaten, according to research by former University of Arizona anthropologist Timothy Jones. That amounts to more than 29 million tons of food waste each year, or enough to fill the Rose Bowl every three days. Nationwide, food scraps make up 17 percent of what we send to landfills. Although a large majority of this comes from expired and unsold food in stores and restaurants as well as unharvested food, I feel like we as consumers play a significant role as well.
Say No to food waste: Why is food waste a problem? Isn’t it biodegradable? And Compostable?? 1) Well first of all, when food rots, it produces methane, which can trap 20 times more heat in the earth’s atmosphere, and therefore is 20 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. 2) If just 5 percent of Americans’ food scraps were recovered it would represent one day’s worth of food for 4 million people. About 5 million people starve each year in the world. 3) Finally, if we waste less, we buy less, and less is produced. So in addition to less food waste, this means less packaging waste, lower production energy use, fewer transportation emissions. 4) The best part about it, as I learned, is this means money saved.
Before this project, I was extremely wasteful. When eating at dining halls or row houses, my method of approach to getting food was to put a little bit of whatever looked good onto my plate. Depending on the day, of course, this usually amounted to a significant amount of food, much more than I could ever eat. This often was a similar situation at Safeway, but not as bad because cost was now a big limiting factor. Nonetheless, my three-person room ended up with a lot of trash!
What I did. I decided to see how much I could minimize my food waste. This entailed not only entailed buying less and smarter, but sometimes meant that I ate a little more. Since I normally went to my friends’ houses and dining halls to eat dinner, I decided not to cart around a scale and weigh my food waste. Instead, I wanted to cut all “good food waste” down to absolutely 0. Good food waste is any good food that I wouldn’t eat just because I was full and got to much, as opposed to bad food which I didn’t eat because it was plain disgusting, which was much more out of my control.
I fought this problem on two fronts: eating out, and eating in my room. When eating out, I obviously would try and pick my food wisely so that I would actually like it. But more importantly, if I ever had any “good food waste” left on my plate, I’d take it back to my dorm to eat as leftovers. Granted this guaranteed me some weird looks sometimes, I actually saved A LOT of food.
I also tried to maximize my meals at houses and dining halls because the food was already prepared, and any food I didn’t eat would probably be thrown out in a few days anyways.
On the home front, I became a big fan of leftovers and simple meals. Using the blog wastedfood.com as my food bible, I discovered new techniques to preparing food that would otherwise go bad. Quick side not, its 10 times more delicious to heat leftovers up on a skillet with a little oil than in a microwave. I kept note of what food I had to throw out as well.
How did I do?? I’ll first start with the bad. On 5 occasions, when I was either in a rush or not going straight home afterwards, I didn’t bring home my good waste. On three other occasions, I didn’t eat the food that I brought home because it just didn’t look so appealing as leftovers.
The clearest measure of my success looking at the money saved on food. Looking at my checking account, I was able to tabulate the total food-related spending for this quarter and compared it with that of last quarter. The results were shocking: I spent only $503 this quarter compared to $1035 from last quarter, a factor of two less. I owe this to the fact that I ate 90% of my weekly meals for free houses and dining halls, and bought only necessities like milk, cereal, eggs, and bread for my room, none of which I let spoil before the expiration date because there was so little food in my room.
I also feel that I successfully made a beneficial lifestyle change. Now, when my roommate makes too much food, I cover it up and put it in the fridge, whereas before I would have just left it. I freeze my bread so it lasts longer, and check expiration dates on milk when I buy it.
Conclusions
Stanford should definitely switch to trayless dining. By eliminating trays in residential dining locations, Stanford can conserve water, reduce the amount of chemical detergents released into the environment and lower energy costs. Tray-less dining also has the added benefit of reducing the volume of food wasted in dining halls.
