Prevent Wasted Food

Preventing Wasted Food is a National Thing!

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Since 2018, we here at No Food Left Behind-Corvallis have been bringing you information and resources, which we hope have been enlightening & motivational, about the systemic, global problem of wasted food. Five years later, we’re happy to be a partner — for the second consecutive year — of National Food Waste Prevention Week, April 10th-16th, 2023.

(Temps don’t stay constant!)

There’ll be loads of resources and connections from all over the country, social media engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, tips for wasting less at home, events, an art contest for K-12 students, webinars, and fun game show-style quizzes. There will also be more Spanish-language resources and materials! Keep checking back at their website for updates and happenings.

The goal of National Food Waste Prevention Week is “to educate and inspire real cultural change around food waste… to help families save money, reduce the negative impact of food waste on the environment, and address hunger in our communities.” Pretty ambitious — but the good news is there are hundreds of partners from every part of the country, representing every sector of the food system, signing on. Hooray! Preventing Wasted Food is a National Thing!

Oregon is one of the top three states with 38 participating agencies and organizations so far, thanks to our colleagues at the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Materials Management division, which is a principal organizing partner for this national event. DEQ also lends its unique “Bad Apple” campaign characters (like the broccoli figure) to the national effort. Maybe you’ve picked up one of these stickers at our Farmers’ Market table!

We would be remiss if we neglected to mention the fact that DEQ grant funding jump-started NFLB five years ago. We are proud to be one of DEQ’s partners in its statewide campaign to reduce wasted food.

How You Can Participate in National Food Waste Prevention Week:

  • TAKE THE PLEDGE to use good habits to reduce food waste at home and work, be accountable, and share your knowledge with others! Then post your commitment on social media (if you so choose).
  • TAKE A QUIZ: Are you as savvy as a 5th Grader? Daily fun facts and tips. (Maybe you ARE a fifth grader!)
  • Encourage your child to enter the STUDENT ART CONTEST. This year’s theme: “How Does Reducing Our Food Waste Protect Our Planet?” Check out last year’s winners!
  • Learn something or make a new connection in a WEBINAR. The offerings range from general interest to geeky. Many will be state- or regionally-specific.
  • FOLLOW National Food Waste Prevention Week on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for fun facts and tips before, during and after the week!
  • TRACK YOUR FOOD HABITS FOR A WEEK using NFLB’s “Wasted Food Discovery Week” form (also available in Spanish). Browse our Recipes for Leftovers, or download one or more of our other Smart Strategies to help you change those behaviors and save money!
  • SEE FUN EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS in English and Spanish from NFLB’s own “Magic Mama” Kjersten Hallin. This spring, Kjersten will once again be presenting these, along with movement, music and curriculum-enhancing activities in Corvallis schools. Contact us to request a visit to your child’s classroom!

EVERY WEEK CAN BE WASTED FOOD PREVENTION WEEK!

Many of you, during our regular encounters at the Corvallis Farmers’ Markets, have mentioned your concerns about the entire spectrum of food waste, from unharvested produce at field and farm, to the full dumpsters behind a big box grocer or retailer, to the garbage receptacles at restaurants, in school lunchrooms, at sporting events and festivals.

We’re happy to report that the problem is now being addressed in nearly every state and in many municipalities, through governmental programs and public-private partnerships across all sectors of our food systems. Sophisticated, data-driven initiatives from non-profit and non-governmental research organizations like ReFED, Project Drawdown, and the NRDC have created resources and conceptual groundwork for systemic change by 2030.

But it still comes down to each one of us, in our own households, to make the biggest difference. It’s now well established that most food waste happens IN THE HOME, and that reducing food waste is the #1 personal action we can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions driving the global climate crisis.

National Food Waste Prevention Week happens each April, just like Earth Day. Shouldn’t EVERY DAY be Earth Day? Let’s make EVERY WEEK Food Waste Prevention Week!

Congratulations, Conscientious Food Consumers (and everyone who’s working on it). You are part of a nationwide, even international, movement!

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!

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!