Prevent Wasted Food

We love composting! The challenge: compost LESS

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

“I will compost my food scraps”

Ever since No Food Left Behind-Corvallis began its public outreach at our local farmers’ markets, we’ve noticed how people love to talk about composting! Of course, there’s personal satisfaction in turning food scraps into enrichment and/or worm castings for one’s home garden. It can be fun to experiment with various DIY approaches to composting in your backyard, your neighborhood or community garden, or maybe just with a few containers outside at your apartment.

Compost, done properly, does provide an important boost to soil quality and plant health, as well as for the insects and microorganisms needed for thriving gardens. It also helps retain moisture in the soil and reduces the need for pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Not shown: food-fails: stale/moldy/lost in the fridge/freezer/didn’t keep track/etc! Credit: @NaturalWays22

And since throwaway food comprises almost one-quarter of the organic waste going into municipal landfills, composting also serves an important function for diverting that waste stream, sequestering carbon and reducing the generation of the powerful, climate-altering greenhouse gas, methane. The US Compost Council’s theme for its 2024 International Compost Awareness Week is “nature’s climate champion.”

So, of course, we love composting too! We’re always happy to send folks home with a nifty kitchen compost bucket, stuffed with some of our Smart Strategies for wasting less food at home, and saving your grocery $$, every day.

But for many folks, composting is a feel-good antidote for food waste guilt, and a way to excuse our not-so-diligent efforts to reduce the amount of EDIBLE food going into that kitchen compost bucket, the backyard compost pile, and/or the Yard Debris (“Mixed Organics”) cart from Republic Services.*

Let’s be clear, Conscientious Consumers: composting happens at the END of the food that we buy, store, prep and discard… right?

Composting: a less-preferred food disposal method

If something that was edible to begin with ends up in the compost pile (or worse, the garbage), it was still wasted! It’s a waste of all the water, energy, labor — and your $$$– that went into getting that food from farm to fork. For the average American family of four, wasted food adds up $1,600 a year! How much could you save by COMPOSTING LESS?

K’RENE’S CONFESSION: As it turns out, we can save more and compost less at my house, too! We followed the advice in COMPOST LESSon #2 (below) but still managed to deliver a whole package of tortillas into the compost.

There was cod in the freezer, red cabbage and cilantro fresh from the garden, and other ingredients already on hand, so we planned a meal of fish tacos. Unhappily, while rummaging in the cheese drawer for the pepper-jack shreds, I discovered a entire unopened package of moldy tortillas! Apparently, they had been taken out of the freezer, placed in the drawer, and buried before they had thawed completely. Predictably, melting remnants of frozen crystals inside the sealed package provided a nice medium for a happy colony of microbes — and off to the store we went for fresh tortillas. MONEY WASTED: $3.99

LESSON LEARNED: StillTasty.com advises us to wrap tortilla package (unopened) in foil or plastic, or use a freezer bag, to avoid ice crystals. And next time, we’ll thaw the tortillas on the fridge shelf in plain sight!

Aerate/turn the pile periodically
Empty kitchen compost bucket into the pile

COMPOST LESSon #1: Just how much food DO you compost in one week that was formerly-edible? We challenge you to an at-home wasted food audit for a reality check! If you’re a no-waste champ, please share what you know with people who need to learn those skills.

COMPOST LESSon #2:  Shop your fridge-freezer-pantry first! Then meal-plan and do a shopping list, using helpful resources like this one from our local Co-op . Repeat until it becomes a comfortable money-saving habit.

COMPOST LESSon #3: Share surplus food with friends, neighbors, other people, or animals (urban dwellers, think chickens and rabbits) before it becomes compost! Check with Linn-Benton Food Share or your local food pantries in Philomath and Corvallis for donation guidelines and drop-off hours. The South Corvallis Food Bank welcomes your fresh garden produce.

* DID YOU KNOW? In your Republic Services yard debris cart, you can chuck the yucky spoiled meat, seafood, dairy and bones that don’t belong in your own compost heap. If you don’t have your own Yard Debris cart, ask a neighbor or friend who does. Republic’s organics processing facility near Adair Village — established in 2010 as the first such facility in Oregon — can handle it.

Remember, we love composting! The challenge is to compost LESS.

PLEASE DO COMPOST: HALLOWEEN PUMPKINS!

Just be sure to make use of those tasty “pumpkin guts” first!

If you want a compost pail like the one above, you can get one by visiting the NFLB table at our local Farmers’ Markets, periodically on Saturdays (downtown), Tuesdays (south town) and Sundays (Philomath). You can also play our new Wasted Food Prevention Bingo, where EVERYONE WINS! We’ll also be at the Winter Market at the Benton County Fairgrounds, starting in January.

You can also request one by emailing us at [email protected].

 

Discover how much you can $ave in 2022 with our DIY challenge!

Greetings for 2022, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Kitchen Confessions is back and we’re ramping up our efforts to help you waste less food and save more $$ in your household food budget in this new year. You can look forward to even more useful tips, anecdotes, resources and friendly nudges for making the most of your groceries — every day, every meal!

Now that we’ve all had awhile to settle into 2022, it’s a great time to challenge ourselves to a Do-It-Yourself Wasted Food Discovery Week . It’s a simple, three-step self audit to help you determine:

  • How much and which kinds of food got tossed;
  • Why they got wasted;
  • Optional: weight or volume of wasted food items; and
  • How much did you spend for those items or portions?
    Wasted Food = Wasted $$!

If you live in Corvallis, Albany, or Philomath, please utilize your Yard Debris cart from Republic Services for compost waste.  When you keep food out of the landfill, you’re also doing your part to reduce those powerful methane greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate havoc!

Once you multiply one week’s totals by the number of remaining weeks this year, you’ll probably get a valuable reality check on how much $$ you can save with simple actions and tools like the ones in our Smart Strategies tool box (available in both Spanish and English).

Karen’s Confession: My Wasted Food Discovery Week “reality check” last year yielded a bottom line of more than $1,000 in potential savings! So I am certainly extra-motivated in this new year to prevent hundreds of my hard-earned dollars from going into the compost bin. You can read about what I learned and shared in KC blog #24, “Waste Happens. Own it-Track it-Save!”

Karen’s Wasted Food Discoveries (omg!)

GREAT TOOLS CREATE GREAT HABITS!
Jeanette’s 2021 success story

NFLB Program Director Jeanette Hardison

In the past year, the NFLB staff has worked extra hard to walk our talk and make changes in our own homes.

We know how challenging it can be at times in family situations and multi-member households, so wasted food/money still happens! This past week, I had to compost some moldy bread ends and some stale cheddar puffs, and Karen shared with me her chagrin about wasting a whole package of Bob’s Red Mill organic oats.

However, in 2021 my family and I realized some notable changes around leftovers and withering produce in the fridge. I have been surprised and delighted to find that, after more than a year taping Eat First! signs to a leftovers section in our fridge, it has become automatic to start our meal prep there!

Whether it was cooked rice, some extra tossed salad, or items closest to their “Best By” dates, it has became so automatic we no longer seem to need the signage!

This part is pretty important: Hubby and I found that if items remained clearly visible, identified AND date-labeled (tape on front is most helpful), it was super easy to eat everything up!

So in using NFLB’s Smart Strategy tools, my fridge clean-outs have mostly become a thing of the past. It’s good to know how to build muscle-memory for this money-saving habit! YOU CAN TOO!

*****

How much will you save in 2022, Conscientious Food Consumers? Join the Kitchen Confessions staff and everyday folks like these in everyday actions that can make a HUGE difference! Here’s some other resources you may find useful:

Smart Strategy: Prep Now, Eat Later
ACTION: How to use your Yard Debris/Mixed Organics recycling cart from Republic Services
Smart Strategy: Fruit & Vegetable Storage Guide

Here’s to a healthy and waste-less 2022! If you’re shopping the Winter Farmers’ Market at the Benton County Fairgrounds (we’re there every other week near the main entrance, across from Riverland Farms), be sure to drop by our booth and say hello!

Carrot Top Pesto & other “zero waste” ideas

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

We’re still giddy over the response to our first-ever Leftovers Recipes Contest (Drawing), in which local Conscientious Chefs shared creative methods for wasting less food and money at home, one meal at a time! Thanks again to all who participated.

Emily S.’ Leftover Spaghetti Pie

We’re pleased to highlight in this blog some of our Recipe Contest chefs who are tossing fewer items into the compost and making more soups, casseroles, pesto, curry and muffins — thus demonstrating a “zero waste” kind of mindset. Be sure to check out our new Recipes for Leftovers section, which we hope will provide you with some fresh inspiration as well as more $aving$ for your grocery budget!

Remarkably, one of our original drawing winners donated her gift card — so we were delighted to be able to do a second drawing. Congrats to our “Runner Up” drawing winner Emily S. of Philomath, whose leftover Spaghetti Pie has also been uploaded to our new Recipes section.

(Note: you’ll see quotes around the term “zero waste” because I’m using it rather loosely.)

FROM LESS WASTED FOOD TO “ZERO WASTE”

For many of us, even if we’re actively pursuing a more sustainable lifestyle, “zero waste” may sound a little intimidating.

You’re already being more conscious about wasting less food at home. You’re already working the 3R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. What more can you do? You can step it up and place added focus on “Reduce,” which means preventing waste in the first place. With everything we use and consume — especially in our own kitchens — we can all develop a “zero waste” mindset that asks:

    • “What can I do with this before it becomes part of the waste stream?
    • Can I eat it/reuse it/compost it/recycle it first?”

In Kitchen Confessions terms: how can you do more with the food you already have? How can you use parts of the food you don’t typically think of as edible, like cheese rinds? Produce peels, rinds, stalks, tops and bottoms? Bones and coffee grounds? Keep scrolling, Conscientious Food Consumers!

COMPOSTING VERSUS ZERO WASTE

Most of the time, we on the NFLB staff downplay composting in our messaging and outreach, even though we do actively support the practice. Why downplay it? Composting can make it easy for us to excuse our wasting habits. If the food that got composted was edible in the first place, then technically it was still wasted! See our page: “What About Composting?”

Given the scale of the food waste problem, composting is “inextricably linked” with zero waste. But the real goal with “zero waste” is to maximize, as much as possible, the resources represented in every part of our food.

Producing soil amendment from spoiled and/or undesirable food is certainly better than sending that inedible organic waste to the landfill. In Corvallis and Philomath, residents have the option of curbside composting through Republic Services, while OSU’s Extension Service offers advice on getting started with backyard composting.

Donna T’s Watermelon Rind Pickles
Donna T’s Carrot Top Pesto
Sarah B’s Veggie Scrap Soup Stock

SOME “ZERO WASTE” CONTEST RECIPES

  • Donna T.’s Carrot Top Pesto (shown as handy frozen single portions) and Watermelon Rind Pickles, using those parts that typically go to waste.
  • “I haven’t paid for vegetable stock in years,” boasts Sarah B. when introducing her Vegetable Scrap Soup Stock. Her family’s stock-from-scratch doesn’t need aseptic packaging and uses veggies and trimmings that others might toss: “any sad and wilted individuals from the bottom of your veggie crisper,” carrot or parsnip ends/peels, onion skins/ends, mushroom stems, cauliflower/cabbage cores/leaves, kale stems, or celery stumps.
  • “Almost anything goes!” says Rebecka W. of her One Pot Adaptable Curry — a  recipe she “adapts” with odds and ends from her spice cabinet as well as whatever she finds at fridge clean-out time.
  • Mali G. blends up random fruits/veggies, and found a great new way to use the byproduct with her Juice Pulp Muffins!
  • Donna P. prepares her Everything Ramen Soup with random leftovers and stock from “scraps that I am cutting off of the produce, like onion butts, carrot tops, chard stems, mushroom stems, bits of ginger that have gotten tough, meat bones — pretty much anything that isn’t funky or rotten…”
www.eatyourselfskinny.com/juice-pulp-muffins/
Donna P’s Everything Ramen Soup
Rebecka W’s One Pot Adaptable Curry

TODAY’S KITCHEN CONFESSION:

I CONFESS that I am still learning what “zero waste” means!

I must also FRANKLY CONFESS that in this blog, I’ve been using the term rather loosely to describe recipes with ingredients that would normally get tossed or composted. Assuming these dishes were completely consumed (either by people or people food-loving animals), they might then qualify as truly “zero waste” recipes!

In the waste management and recycling industries, “zero waste” is a complex topic. It’s also a growing global movement that is fundamentally altering human attitudes and practices regarding our relationship to natural resources, consumption and waste disposal.  Learn more about the “zero waste” movement!

A few recommended resources:

As a project of the Waste Prevention Action Team of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, the NFLB campaign and Kitchen Confessions are here to help you (and ourselves) “step it up” along the path to zero waste!

Waste happens. Own it-Track it-$ave!

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

With spring unfolding soon here in the mid-Willamette Valley, it’s time for some cleaning, clearing out and… confessing!

We’ve been saying it here for almost a year now: WASTED FOOD = WASTED MONEY. But exactly how much, and why? That’s where our newly-updated D.I.Y. Wasted Food Discovery self-audit form, both in English and Spanish, comes in handy. Try it for a week, and you’ll gain some valuable insights about your household’s food-wasting habits. Behaviors change when we measure them.

Gautami, NFLB’s OSU intern (2019)

You may become inspired to keep doing it on a regular basis — especially after discovering how many grocery dollars you can keep from going down the drain, compost bin or garbage!

OWN IT: Waste happens!

Are you ready to admit that waste happens in your kitchen? It’s not about guilt (although that can be a motivator) — it’s being willing to get real, about how some items in your fridge, freezer and pantry that coulda/shoulda been prepared and eaten ended up wasted instead. Keep reading for a look at what I discovered!

WHAT GOT WASTED

TRACK IT: What got wasted, and why?

With our D.I.Y. Wasted Food Discovery Week form, tallying up the food items that went slimy, spoiled, freezer-burned or forgotten isn’t complicated. You’ll estimate:

  • The amounts and types of food (it’s okay to “guestimate” your leftover portions/servings, packages or containers — I used cups, ounces and servings for my calculations);
  • The full or proportional cost for each of those items;
  • If you have a kitchen scale, measure the weight of wasted items.

WHY IT GOT WASTED: Recall the circumstances or trail of events from the market to your compost pail or trash can for your listed items. This step is your key to change!

You know how it goes… * Ran out of time to cook or cooked too much?  * Fridge or freezer over-stuffed? * Too tired to get creative with leftovers? * Marked down/sale items go stale or moldy before you know it? * Bananas turned brown or avocados went bad because they were hanging out on the counter together? (Both emit ethylene gas, which hastens the ripening process.)

ADD IT UP. One week’s wasted $$ x 52 weeks in a year… Prepare to be shocked! (I certainly was.)

Here’s what I learned from my Wasted Food Discovery Week.

WHY IT WAS WASTED

Karen Confesses:

Despite blogging and becoming much more vigilant about my own kitchen habits during the past year, I still waste too much!

After a quick review, I discovered that my main problems are inadequate meal prep and managing the Eat First shelf of my fridge and pantry. I also still have issues with wasting avocados and bananas (two of my favorites).

Lessons Learned:

  • Check avocado(s) for ripeness every day! Use or transfer to fridge once ripe, or within 3 days of purchase.
  • Buy fewer of the items I’m eating less of (like sugar- and carb-heavy products).
  • Freeze leftover broth in cubes rather than letting an open carton spoil in the fridge.
  • Buy fewer bananas and just eat ’em — rather than sticking in freezer smoothie bags.
  • Check/update my Freezer Inventory every week!
$$ POTENTIALLY WASTED, 1 YEAR (Omg!)

$$$ Wasted:

This is my worst Kitchen Confession of all! Just one week’s waste in my little kitchen represented a potential loss of over $1,000 in one year! That’s a pretty significant chunk — and a HUGE motivation for me to walk the talk, follow my own advice more, and WASTE LESS.

WHAT TO DO. You’ll have some good ideas once you’ve completed your own Wasted Food Discovery Week. Let our Smart Strategies support your improved habits and behaviors for less future waste.

  • Do you need more meal planning? More prep after your groceries come home?
  • Do you need better storage? (we also recommend StillTasty.com)
  • Do you need to inventory what’s in your freezer or pantry?
  • Do you need more Eat First signs for your leftovers, and are they clearly date-labeled?

Also see our previous Kitchen Confessions for resources and tips you may have missed.

RECIPE CONTEST (2021) DEADLINE EXTENSION!

(UPDATE/NOTE: CONTEST HAS ENDED!)

We’re extending the deadline for our Leftovers Recipe Contest an extra week to Sunday, APRIL 11th, 2021! What’s your latest hack or culinary inspiration for making use of those random items on the Eat First shelf of your fridge, freezer or pantry?

Here’s of a few of our entries so far: Spaghetti Pie, Mashed Potato Pancakes, Peach Pancake Mix Muffins, Olde Valentine Choco-Coco Bites, and Tuna Cakes with Pickle Cream.

Every recipe is an entry to win a $30 gift card from First Alternative Coop. We’d love to see yours!

No Questions Left Behind (ok, a few)

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

As autumn approaches, we can all look back on how our lives have changed since March, and the reality of COVID-19. Like most everything else, No Food Left Behind Corvallis has transitioned online, and in April we launched “Kitchen Confessions.”

Before COVID-19, NFLB’s outreach happened in the schools, community presentations, and through all-seasons tabling at the Corvallis Farmers’ Markets — we miss seeing everyone! Although we are doing limited outreach at the Corvallis Southtown Farm Stand & Market (pictured), we’re not reaching as many of you in person now.

Now more than ever, NFLB — a project of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition’s Waste Prevention Action Team (WPAT) — is here to support you in conscientiously developing smart, money-saving approaches for making the most of the food in your home during this pandemic, and beyond.

So with this installment of “Kitchen Confessions,” we’re highlighting a few Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that we hear regularly.

“Are you with the gleaners?”

NFLB is not involved in gleaning, but we love promoting local groups like Mid-Valley Harvest and our Coalition partners, Linn-Benton Food Share and the Marys River Gleaners! These volunteer-driven organizations are helping local property owners, from small rural farmers to your neighbor down the street, manage the bounty that would otherwise go unharvested and rot on the ground. They welcome your energy and financial donations.

“WPAT? What’s that about?”

The Waste Prevention Action Team’s (WPAT) vision for Corvallis is “a waste-free community that fosters behaviors to reduce consumption of material goods.” Strategies include significantly increasing the community’s recycling rate, and diverting hazardous waste and other materials from the landfills — especially wasted food.

We’ve got a big problem there, with almost half of Corvallis residents throwing wasted food into the garbage instead of using the Yard Debris carts provided by local hauler and Coalition partner Republic Services. You can even toss nasty wasted meat, bones and dairy items into the Yard Debris cart!

The video at the bottom of our composting page describes the serious industrial-scale processes used by Republic to create a high-quality compost product. (Note: this curbside composting service is currently available only in Corvallis and Philomath.)

“What about composting? Do you teach people how?”

Composting, and how-to, is not our focus with NFLB. We’re focused on what happens before food gets turned into compost! If something that was edible in the first place ends up in your compost bin or yard debris cart, it was technically still wasted. Just think of all the resources that went into getting that food from farm to fork.

What we do try to teach is how to avoid the waste that has to end up in the compost, and we provide many tools to make that easier!

Utilizing organic waste matter to create new soil is great, and we highly encourage this practice over throwing food away. That’s also why we offer these handy kitchen compost pails — made from recycled plastic, of course! — that you may have seen at our Farmers’ Market table. You can get one of these popular counter-top compost pails for free, or help offset our cost through a tax-deductible donation.

If you’re just getting started, here’s an intro to composting, along with many other informative publications from our local experts at the OSU Extension Service. Additional advice is also available from Extension volunteer Master Gardeners.

“Are you a volunteer group? Who are you funded by?”

As a project of the volunteer-driven Sustainability Coalition and WPAT, No Food Left Behind’s current staff and operations are grant funded by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), in contract with the non-profit Corvallis Sustainability Coalition. We are proud to support the Corvallis Climate Action Plan goals, as well as DEQ’s long-standing work on food waste prevention and its response to Governor Brown’s March 10, 2020 directive (p7) “to prevent and recover food waste, with the goal of reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030.”

You can read our 2018-19 DEQ Final Report here.

“What about all the food waste happening in restaurants and grocery stores?”

It is a huge problem, estimated to cost U.S. businesses $57 billion annually, while creating mountains of waste in landfills and climate-changing methane emissions. However, a 2017 study revealed that the greatest amount of wasted food happens at home! That’s why it is NFLB’s focus.

Oregon businesses are making great progress in addressing this problem with help from DEQ’s “Wasted Food Wasted Money” campaign. as well as Metro Portland’s Food Waste Stops With Me program, in cooperation with industry associations like the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association. Businesses receive free resource guides, on-site assistance to train employees in food waste prevention, and ways to donate edible surplus food and set up on-site composting programs.

 

This Week’s Kitchen Confession:

KAREN CONFESSES:

This sad specimen of ruined cantaloupe was destined for a fresh fruit salad or ice cream/yogurt bowls. Following my handy Fruit and Vegetable Storage Guide, I put it on my counter to ripen for a couple of days, and then stowed it in the “Eat First” area of my fridge… where it somehow migrated to the back. It was shriveled, over-ripe and moldy on the bottom by the time I retrieved it!

$$$ WASTED: $3-$4

LESSONS LEARNED: Cut/prep the melon for that fruit salad the same day it goes into the fridge! Make more room for my “Eat First!” items. Place cut melon in a labeled or see-through container in my “Eat First” area AND make a note on my weekly Meal Planner.

 

We look forward to supporting you and your loved ones through the coming months of the COVID-19 era. Be Well!