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!

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!