Reducing Food Waste

These teenagers in Ukraine saw that no one was putting an effort to deal with organic waste or composting, so they decided to find an unoccupied and convenient area for composting. They didn't stop there; they fundraised and bought the school a composting machine. On top of that, they taught children at schools how to compost.

Eventually, their project won support from the government. This led to Ukrain having composting machines in every schools, restaurants, and cafes.

Earlier today, CBC Toronto tweeted this story highlighting a man who started a company that picks up and delivers leftovers from events or otherwise discarded food. This story, as well as the man’s actions, represents congruence. He displays a strong passion for environmentalism, and he tells the story of how this problem came to his attention while he worked for a catering company. He recognized an issue with food waste, and saw the way it impacted pollution and food insecurity. Instead of just complaining about the problem, he organized a movement and made a difference. His actions are congruent with his values. 

Would you eat recycled landfill meat? - BBC News

Studies covering food waste generally agree on the definition of the problem, framing it within the context of global carbon emissions.  Food production accounts for a significant amount of the carbon emissions created by industry, as well as the secondary effects of anaerobic decomposition of the food waste.  Importantly, these studies focus on the issues related to food waste at the consumer level, where most food is wasted.  While most Americans consider food waste an issue that must be addressed at the individual level, the professional position is that there needs to be a combination of regulatory “nudges” and behavioral changes to address the issue.  Food waste is one of the most ripe areas for the application of what we have learned about social change because it is largely a problem with individual behavior that can be solved by education and community cooperation.  A critical issue in food waste is addressing the “attitude-behavior gap” (Djekic et al., 1, 2019) so that we can solve the problem at the community level.

We looked at two studies concerning food waste at the consumer level. Household food waste in Serbia e Attitudes, quantities and global warming potential, the first piece analyzed the current attitudes of Serbian citizens with regard to food waste and addressed the reasons why people throw away food.  The study relied on a survey of 494 citizens in Belgrade.  The main conclusion of the study was that the respondents tend to think of food packaging as a larger concern in terms of carbon emissions than food waste.  In reality, the emissions created by 1.5kg of food waste per week amounted to 3.46kg of carbon created, while their discarding of 65 pieces of food packaging accounted for only 0.16kg of carbon emissions. (Djekic et al., 2019)  This article is significant in that it defines the direct carbon impact of food waste and addresses the issues with perception around food waste.  A major issue in food waste as suggested by this paper is that there is little awareness as to the impact of wasted food, while food production accounts for as much as 50% of all industrial carbon emissions.  (Djekic et al., 2019)

The second study, Delivery, impact and approach of household food waste reduction campaigns, focuses on the efficacy of informational campaigns, pay-as-you-throw programs,and  faith-based messaging programs to reduce food waste.  This piece serves mostly as a review of the variety of options available to governments in encouraging food waste reduction and analyzes the efficacy of those options in the cases they were implemented.  Education programs were considered to be quite effective, costs in households in London were reduced by 30-40% in one case.  In the case of the “Stop Wasting Food” program in Denmark, food waste was reduced by 25% over two years.  The pay-as-you-throw programs were also somewhat effective and may have a greater lasting effect than educational campaigns.  Programs also used a variety of messaging plans, usually either environmental or economic.  There were also cases in which faith based programs were used, tying food waste to religious responsibility, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Djekic, Ilija, Miloradovic, Zorana, Djekic, Sofija, & Tomasevic, Igor. (2019). Household food waste in Serbia – Attitudes, quantities and global warming potential. Journal of Cleaner Production, 229, 44-52.

@arguetpdx aims to shed light on the inadequate behavior exhibited by Portland police when faced with non neurotypical members of the community. The blog recognizes the public safety threat that this issue presents. They cite a local policy in which police brutality is a direct violation. One of the main points made is that police officers do not get the proper training in order to respond to community members with mental illnesses. Even crisis intervention teams have to potential to present a risk to those they interact with. The question this blog poses is about what should be done to increase trust of police, and what will make mentally ill individuals feel less fear when interacting with police.

In Portland, there is a chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which provides public education courses in hopes to spread information about mental illness crisis intervention. One main focus of this organization is working with Portland P.D. to develop a better understanding of how to responsibly interact with potentially mentally ill individuals. On a smaller scale, Disarm PSU is a movement created by students in response to the unjust killing of Jason Washington. The movement intended to make Portland State a safer environment by removing lethal weapons from campus security officers.  

Awareness for this issue increased in 2018 after a man with Schizophrenia was wrongfully killed for jaywalking. This case has since been used to reference a failure of police to respond correctly when faced with a mental health related situation.

The creators of the blog link some articles and news stories detailing recent efforts to reform the crisis response protocol. These types of reform efforts seem to be on the rise, but the issue is still a prominent part of everyday life. The interview included in this blog was conducted with a retired police chief from Hillsboro. He confirmed what was already reported in regards to the lack of training on crisis intervention. He recognizes that the reforms have made a difference, but many officers still have little to no idea how to interact with a mentally ill individual. He doesn’t believe that, as of now, police officers are the right people to send to this kind of call. The danger it puts the individuals in is not worth the police effort. There is a high likelihood that the situation will escalate to an unnecessary threat level.

This student blog, Reducing Recidivism through Rehabilitation, seeks to raise awareness on how our criminal justice system is currently failing. Yet, it can be resolved if the right resources are given to people. This blog touches base on a podcast which talks about Bennie Lee’s experience in the prison system as well as his release back into society. Bennie explains how difficult it was to adjust and live a normal life after being released back into society. The reasons being that there was a lot of racism, employment discrimination, and difficulty adjusting to the community. Overall, the podcast addresses how when someone is released, but don’t have a job or, in general, don’t have access to financial security, recidivism rates increase because it may be seen as the only option left.

The article, “GTL’s Education Solutions Can Break the Cycle of Recidivism,” talks about how there can be a decrease in recidivism if inmates are allowed to get an education while in prison. If people are trapped in the prison cycle with no work skills, knowledge, or experience, it can be hard to survive without employment but easy to go back to criminal activity. The article also states that when the rate of recidivism decreases, it alleviates the taxpayer burden.

In a seemingly eco-friendly city like Portland, it’s easy to find stakeholders who care deeply about the reduction of food waste. Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality is one example of a department that has made significant strides in bringing awareness and change to the issue. They believe that this is in the best interest of everyone within the community because of the impact food waste has on climate change (McDermott, et al.).

One individual with ties to the department who sees the effects of the problem firsthand is Christa McDermott, the director of environmental services here at PSU. We had the opportunity to interview her and learned more about her personal interest in the topic. She sees the responsibility as belonging to many people and companies at every level of the system. She has made a lot of changes in her personal life, and has more on the horizon because she knows how controlling her food waste will affect both her and everyone around her. She also explained some of the connections between food waste, food accessibility, and food quality, which effects many members of the community (McDermott).

Often times, those with the an interest in reducing food waste are the consumers, while those who are pushing back against these efforts are the businesses and production companies that profit off of food. Some of the stakeholders with opposite points of interest include grocery stores that specialize in large quantity bulk food sales (Slow Road), and restaurants that market generous portions (Food Waste). Through conducting our interview with the director of environmental services, we learned that one step towards reducing food waste in restaurants would be to serve smaller plates of food, but there are very few companies willing to adopt this policy because it isn’t good for business (McDermott). The same goes for the stores. It’s easy to draw customers in with the promise of large quantities of food for low prices, but the likelihood that the consumer uses up all the food before it goes bad is slim (McDermott et al.).

References

Food Waste Is a Massive Problem-Here's Why. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/

McDermott, C., Elliott, D., Moreno, L., Broderson, Reed., Mulder, C. (2019). Oregon Food Waste Study.

McDermott, C., (2020). Personal Interview.

What do you do as the director of Community Environmental Services?

I partly do research, like the Oregon Wasted Food Study, but we do a lot of technical assistance outside of the university.  The Campus Sustainability Office works entirely within the university, we work all outside of it.  So with Metro, Port of Portland, City of Portland, those are our main people.  We also do a lot of waste audits for buildings, property managers.  Those are the biggies.

What are some examples of programs that have been able to reduce food waste?

There are some small scale examples of business case studies.  We looked at two restaurants that were very good at reducing waste and using up most of what they got.  They were recognized by the DEQ for their campaign to prevent food waste. For this restaurant, it’s very much a cultural norm, the practice is that you don’t waste food.  One thing we tried to get them to do was to only offer one tortilla, mainly they do tacos, they also do tamales.  So most of the waste we found with them was when people get two tortillas and don’t eat them all.  In this case they didn’t adopt that as it wasn’t culturally appropriate.

These may seem like really minor examples, but it's really norms like these that can really drive food waste.  Something on a bigger scale, one of the other restaurants served seafood.  Part of what drives their low food waste was that they have very high standards.  They have very well trained staff.  Training people, overall, is what we found would be very helpful.  Cooks having good knife skills, these are things you don’t really think about, they are able to trim away more and waste less.  They also cook the food better and people want to eat it all. (laughter)

They also wouldn’t take food from their suppliers that they didn’t think were up to snuff.  This forced the suppliers to find something else to do with their food so they did not create waste.  For example the supplier would smoke what they thought the restaurant would not take to be able to find other markets for it.

What role do you think upstream commercial decisions play in food waste?

It's huge.  It's where we have the most leverage.  Putting all this pressure on individuals is not our most successful leverage point.  Clearly people need to have different behaviors, but we need to set them up for success.  That’s a lot of different things, some that we have control over, some that we don’t.  For example, not labeling stuff in your refrigerator, is one of the driving reasons why food goes bad and people throw it out.  How do you give people more time to cook?   How do you create smaller portions at grocery stores that are reasonably priced?  That’s something that can be controlled upstream and would make a big difference.

What’s something actionable we can do right now?

One of the easiest things you can do is learn meal planning and getting a basket in your fridge that’s a “use first” bin that you have a big sticker on.  We find that meal planning can be a little bit of a double edged sword, if you have a meal plan and something goes wrong and you don’t make that meal it’s like a domino effect.  But if you can get in the habit of meal planning, you’re much more likely to use up your food.  Upstream, we see a lot of waste at grocery stores.  They need to track their waste.  If people started tracking and weighing what they threw out that would be a big step.  Everyone always thinks they’re doing better than what they are.  Making it visible, that’s step number one.

At the commercial level, there needs to be a focus on ordering more appropriately.  For example at a grocery store or a bakery, they’re throwing out a ton of croissants because they do their ordering on more of a gut level check.  They expect some amount of excess, whereas if they looked at their sales records they might get a more accurate picture of what they might sell.  There’s a big fear of “running out” in a lot of places.  On the other hand there are places like Blue Star Donuts, where that’s their model.  They drum up an image of scarcity; “we’re down to that last donut!”  And you’re like “oooh I want that last fancy donut.”  Whereas other places that’s not the model.

What’s the role of food accessibility in food waste?

That’s a big thing.  We didn’t find a significant difference in food waste between urban and rural groups, but we know that when people buy in bulk, depending on the product, that can really go to waste.  One thing we found in our surveys, people who were given food, from food pantries, it’s about to expire.  If that’s one of your main sources of food, it now becomes your thing to throw out, not people further up the chain.  People who have less access to buying food at the grocery store get stuck with low quality food.

How does food quality affect food waste?

One reason people throw things out is because they say it tastes bad, or is cooked poorly.  Going back to the example of the high quality restaurant and the lower quality one, they both found a way to use everything up so it’s not like there’s one path.

Where do you see food waste in the next ten years?

Listen to this podcast to learn more about how local businesses in the Portland Metro area are attempting to stop food waste.

People and businesses are becoming more aware of the damage that food waste has on the environment — specifically companies in the Portland Metro area. There are currently over 1,200 businesses composting in the Metro area. Local governments such as Washington County, metro, the Oregon Department of Quality, and other jurisdictions of the area are helping businesses reduce food waste by providing resources on composting, recycling, and donating. For more information, visit Foodwastestopswithme.org.

An Oregon hotel representative and a restaurant owner talked about several ways they reduce food waste. They reuse food scraps, compost, recycle glass and cardboard, donate food, manage food safety, measuring food portions, and collaborate with customers for caterings and banquets. Additionally, they receive training from the county. The county also provides them with compostable bags, bins for food waste, can liners, and other materials. Furthermore, once the bins are full, the county takes the food waste to be turned into fuel by composting it. These methods have benefited these companies by bringing them financial gains as well as company cultural changes. 

Podcast Link: 

@depressedpdxstudents discusses the increasingly urgent issue with mental health crises on college campuses. With an estimated 1,100 students committing suicide every year, this blog is a warning that the problem must be recognized and addressed if any aid is to come to those suffering from depression. They define depression and present statistics on the mental illness, as well as provide descriptions of potential symptoms. One of the potential solutions proposed is encouraging open and honest dialogue about mental health among college students. Although this is not a complete fix, it is the beginning step towards providing help and treatment, as well as preventing many of the other health and lifestyle issues that often stem from depression.