By Kate Gaertner, Guest Blogger, TripleWinAdvisory.com

Food Waste is a major contributor to carbon emissions globally. In fact, it is ranked the fourth highest priority solution by Project Drawdown for tackling the climate crisis.  Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food produced each year is lost or spoiled before it is able to be consumed. Solving the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted globally could end world hunger and feed up to 3 billion people each year. 

Cutting global food waste in half by 2030 is a key goal of the United Nations and is incorporated into its 17 priority sustainable development goals (SDGs) for the world: #12 SDG - Responsible Consumption and Production. This UN SDG is specifically focused on combating waste across all points within the food system value chain including at the retail and consumer levels; along production, transportation, and distribution channels; and at crop harvesting time.  

When food is wasted no matter where in the system, the resources that were used to produce the food including freshwater and land to grow the crops; energy; labor and financial resources to harvest, process, and transport the food are all squandered as well. Besides the loss of these valuable resources, wasted food goes into a landfill where it rots emitting 3 billion tons of powerful greenhouse gasses each and every year!

It is hard to fathom the amount of food loss occurring annually. Imagine that all the food waste that occurs in the United States was grown in one place, say on a “mega-farm”. That mega-farm would cover roughly 80 million acres or over 75% of the entire state of California!

We’ve made the case for reducing food waste.  Let’s talk now about solutions for mitigating it. 

There are a lot of options for minimizing food waste but some are better than others. Just as we know that recycling is not the first “R” to take, composting is not the first (or only) step in reducing food waste. Use the EPA food recovery hierarchy (below) as your guide for taking action and see where you can implement the ideas in your business and home— every action no matter how small makes a difference. 

In your business: 

• Educate your employees on how and why food waste is important so they can take action at every level. Have them watch this Food Waste Education video to learn more about how the minimization of food waste supports climate change mitigation.

• Conduct a Food Waste Audit in your organization to see where waste is happening, what actions you can take to reduce waste, and what resources you can leverage to support your goals. Look at every food activity from catering, to your break room leftovers, to waste generated from your procurement practices.  Catalog the food waste reduction ideas on a spreadsheet and rate them by how easy they are to implement and how meaningful they are in reducing total tons of food waste at your company.

• Launch a food waste challenge that leverages the passion and ideas of all your employees. What would that look like? Take a look at this food waste reduction challenge that TripleWin Advisory worked on with Bob’s Red Mill in their manufacturing facility. How can you create something similar and appropriate for your business? Making sure your employees understand WHY food waste reduction is important is critical to a successful outcome and a continuous improvement mindset. Set a goal for generating ideas and try offering small incentives to keep people engaged and motivated.

• Do you have a plan for dealing with leftover usable food? Retailers can look into partnerships such as Too Good To Go. If you are not a retailer, research local shelters to partner with that would gladly take your perfectly edible, leftover food.

• Take one more step before the landfill. If you have large-scale food scraps, find a farm that would be happy to use them to support its productive soils or feed livestock. Make composting available and label it clearly. Depending on where you are located in Oregon and what type of business you have, there are these composting services you can use. 

In your home:

No matter who you are or where you live, every person can take actions to eliminate food waste in his/her daily life. Use the below guide to incorporate smart food waste reduction strategies at home and with your family.  

1. Purchasing: Have a plan when you go to the store so you only buy what you need and what you will use.

2. Storing: Learn how and where to store your food to keep it fresh longer. You can extend the life of your most perishable products — fresh produce — by following this guide.

3. Best By Dates: No, you do not have to toss out items on the exact date printed on the label. Learn how to distinguish a food’s safety guidelines. More than 80% of Americans discard perfectly good food because they misunderstand expiration dates. Also, keep your refrigerator and pantry organized in a way that you can see and rotate these items so they don’t get lost.

4. Get Creative: This is the fun part. Play Top Chef and see what you can create before heading out to the store. Have just a few vegetables rolling around the produce drawer? Make a healthy soup or stir fry before they go bad. You’ll cook more creatively and save money along the way!

5. Embrace Composting: Save those scraps from landfill. If you don’t have curbside composting, see what other options are available to use those scraps to enrich your and your community's soils rather than sending them off to become trapped in the garbage to emit methane.

Want to learn more? 

This is just a taste of one impact area (Food) that mightily supports the mitigation of climate change. There are other spheres of influence that businesses and individuals can make changes within that support decarbonization, build resiliency and help actualize the sustainable world we want to see.

TripleWin Advisory’s founder, Kate Gaertner, has created the Cultivate Sustainability Course geared to educate and empower individuals to be agents of change and to take sustainable action. The course discusses the contributions to climate change and building systematic sustainability across eight (8) impact categories including energy, travel & transportation, food, waste, material goods & consumption, water, home & living spaces, and land & property as well as taking a deep-dive into changing behaviors (successfully) and bridging our awareness of how sustainability and climate change are interconnected with public health, environmental and social justice. 

Consider offering your employees this comprehensive 11-week “mini-Masters” in personal sustainability.  Arm them with the knowledge and resources they need to scale up climate actions within your company and the broader community! The course is structured to be accessible to all and makes learning fun and experiential using multimedia engagement and games that help cement key concepts. Just as importantly, the course discusses action-taking at different scales so that the pursuit of sustainability measures can happen at the individual, family, community, and organizational levels.  

Curious or convinced? Kate is offering a special 50% promotional discount to members of Benefit Corporation for Good. Use the promo code CultivateFF50 to take Kate’s Cultivate course at half-price.  We know that individuals are critical stakeholders in solving the climate crisis as confirmed by this most  recent Washington Post article. Join a passionate community of sustainable agents next month! Kate’s Cultivate course kicks off on April 6. Read this FAQ, chat with Tom Hering about his experience with the course, and sign up to be a participant. We are excited to be a part of your sustainability journey!

~benefitcorporationsforgood.com~