Students Against Wasted Food at Eastern Middle School
2021 Earth Force Project From Eagle Nation
What do you think of when you hear the term “food waste”? Maybe food you throw away that you didn’t eat during dinner, or rotten vegetables in the back of your refrigerator. Food waste is all these things and more. It has become a huge problem in the United States. According to Shannon Ingram, an employee of the Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, “In the United States of America we don’t have a good handle on food waste. Food waste makes up about 30 to 40 percent of the food supply. That’s 161 billion dollars worth of wasted food in the U.S. and food waste makes up the largest amount of waste in our landfills. ”
Ingram was also asked what she thought the general public could do on their own to help with the food waste. She suggested, “They can first of all buy imperfect fruits and vegetables that are both healthy and nutritious but that people avoid buying because they don’t look good. A big thing I think people can do is only buy what they can use instead of buying too many things, just buy what they need for the week, because many people buy too much and it goes bad in their refrigerators.” Montgomery County Council Member Will Jawando agreed and also suggested, “One of the big problems in America is that we tend to prepare more than we need and so if you aren’t going to consume it, don’t buy the food…that would be a big, big change. I think the normal person wastes about 238 pounds, that’s like 2 of me a year as far as weight. Buy smaller amounts, so you don’t have to throw it away later…and also the sell by dates, people sometimes throw away food that doesn’t need to be thrown away because it says sell by. That doesn’t mean it’s no longer usable, it just means that’s when they don’t really want people to sell it.”
What do you think is the main source of all of this food waste or one of the most contributing sources? When asked this question, Ingram replied, “I think one of the main issues is the way we sell food in big grocery stores contributes to the way people buy their food and temperature abuse their food. If you are shopping in a big store for an hour (and you have all your food in your cart) and then you have to check out it may go bad, and you buy too much.” Jawando had different sources. “There’s many contributing sources, it’s over consumption, people buying more than they need. The restaurant industry, that’s an issue as well, a lot of food goes to waste in that, especially as we’re dealing with the restaurants reopening. Weather can damage and make it more expensive to harvest and collect crops, there can be waste from weather…everything from our restaurants to transportation of food to household usage to purchasing too much — all of those things contribute. The way you tackle a complex problem is you just try bit by bit, you try to have a plan for each area and commit to it and that’s what we’re going to need to do to eliminate this problem.”
Ingram was asked if she thought what was being done (if anything) to help with the food waste situation was effective. She answered, “I don’t think what is being done is effective because there’s still no noticeable consequences yet in the U.S to the general public for contributing to the large amount of food waste. Also, the work done by the federal agencies hasn’t been as noticeable to the general public to change their habits. Finally, there’s still no consistent organized options for the general public to handle food waste such as an organized food waste pickup along with trash pick up.” Jawando had a slightly different view. “I’ll say some of it is, we’re not as effective as we need to be because there’s definitely more we can do. I mentioned at the beginning how much food waste there is, you know you look and when you match that up with we have one in eight of our [Montgomery County] residents is food insecure…we need to line those things up. We need to take care of our environment but also make sure the people who need food, get food. So we’ve done some things that work but we absolutely need to do more. We’ve been somewhat effective, not as effective as we need to.”
We asked Ingram about her thoughts on composting, she said “First of all, I think the most efficient way to handle food waste is to reduce it.” She also said another option could be for the community to pick up food waste and compost it at a large facility that would test the composts for harmful germs. “If the average person tries to compost all their food waste in the backyard and they don’t do it correctly, it could increase the pests in the neighborhood and also (especially if they add meat to their compost) they could make people sick.” Jawando agreed, but also had a different take on the question, “I think technology is going to play an important part in sustaining our environment but yes I do think composting is a good strategy. It can be difficult to do and in some settings, you need the infrastructure you need to train people. We need to educate people to know what to do and how to do it and so it is an important strategy, again not the only strategy. That’s where I think there could be some innovations and I’m sure there’s people working on how to make composting more effective, how to make it more small-scale and large-scale to do it, and so to do it countywide… I think the number one thing we could do as we talked about is eliminate food waste on the front end: prepare less, only what you need, smaller portions and to the extent that you know you’re going to have over it just have plans to divert extra food like many of our restaurants do to people who are in need. I think those are going to be the things that we can do a lot better and that will see big drops in the amount of food waste.”
Jawando was asked if he supported Little Free Pantries and/or Little Free Libraries being used as Little Free Pantries, he replied “Absolutely, I actually was just involved in the launch of something called Feed the Fridge, which is prepared meals by restaurants that are put in communities that are where there’s many food insecure people. They can just come down, grab a meal out of the fridge, heat it up, and they have a great gourmet meal. That’s an example of a kind of a Little Food Pantry but that’s for prepared foods that need to be refrigerated but of course you can do it in other ways for other types of food. So we need to do as much as we can to lower barriers for people to have access to food…I think that’s a good model that we could use in a lot of areas, food being one of them.” When Jawando was asked more about Feed the Fridge, he said, “It’s a program that was launched here in Montgomery County in partnership with the school system at a few schools but now that we have one at the Takoma Park Recreation Center. There’s other places in the county where it’s going to be coming up, actually they’re going to be doing a launch later this month [of June 2021]. It’s a nonprofit that works with restaurants throughout our region in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area to prepare really healthy food on meals for residents who need it and they put a fridge in a community or in a place where people going to be able to access it…it gets stocked daily with meals people can come down, they don’t have to go wait in a line anywhere that you get to do it with dignity at their own time at their own pace and they can pick it up and go heat up a really nutritious meal…it’s an example of an innovation of a way that restaurants that might prepare more have food they can turn it into some of these be the fridge items. Nothing’s wrong with it, it would go to waste otherwise but it could be used as a way to reduce food waste and also help residents in need.”
Jawando was also asked how much time he thought we had left before we needed to take serious action and if he thought we already needed to. He replied, “We are doing some things, we need to speed it up. We have a lot of smart environmental scientists and people who say how much time we have to save our planet. That’s a moving target but all of them say we have to do things much more quickly. I am excited about what’s happening in Congress right now, President Biden is trying to pass a bill to invest in our infrastructure. Part of that would be to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions through upgrading not only our roads and bridges and the light but also electrifying our grid so that we can take gas and fossil fuel admitting vehicles off the road and make our buildings cleaner who burn a lot of energy…there are some very common sense things we can do as individuals and some things we can do as county government to make it easier and educate residents about how they can help people in our community who are in need of food and how to help the environment. We have some time, but we need to move urgently.”
The SAWF (Students Against Wasted Food) hopes that this article has changed your view on the food waste problem and made you more aware of it. If you haven’t already, we hope that this information from Ingram and Council Member Jawando will push you to take action on the food waste problem, and make sure you buy only as much food as you will eat, buy imperfect fruits and vegetables that aren’t getting picked up, and not trash things because their sell by dates have passed. If you can, composting is also a good way to help our environment, but make sure if you compost you are doing it safely without attracting pests.
Little Free Food Pantries: A Fight Against Food Waste and Hunger
By SAWF (Students Against Wasted Food) Research Committee
Little Free Pantries are a spreading trend across the U.S.; about 850–1,000 have been set up, and for good reason. Little Free Pantries can help fight hunger, are easy to set up, and help reduce food waste.
These mini pantries with the same designs as Little Free Libraries are an easy way for neighbors to help out the people in their community, especially those that need food. People in need can drive by and grab whatever food or supplies they need from the pantries, which can also help prevent the difficulties (and sometimes embarrassment) some people feel when going to food banks.
Little Free Pantries are also a good way to prevent more food waste of things like canned or bagged food. For example, maybe you were going to make a casserole but forgot an ingredient so decided not to make the casserole at all. Instead of throwing away the other ingredients that you may now have too many of or won’t use, you can put the non-perishables in a Little Free
Pantry! By doing this you’re helping hungry families in your community and putting food on their table while reducing food waste at the same time!
Little Free Pantries help food insecurity and food waste very fast, in a matter of minutes and hours, in fact. If you have a Little Free Pantry you may have to restock items a few times a day. One person who has a Little Free Pantry said, “[Items in Little Free Pantries last] probably closer to 45 minutes. Items go in 4 to 5 times per day.” However, these numbers all depend on how much you will be stocking and the size of your box. Any amount of food makes an impact, regardless of how a pantry is stocked.
Restocking would not be a problem for many who would be considering having a Little Free Pantry. You can’t put as many fresh fruits and vegetables as other products since those food items could go bad, but canned and
boxed food, especially food that would be left in the back of the cabinet for years otherwise, would be a great addition to a Little Free Pantry. Vegetables and fruit can also be canned, making them longer-lasting and a great
addition to the pantries (Capps 1).
Little Free Pantries are a great idea that can spread extremely quickly. An Arkansas woman built the first Little Free Pantry, and within two weeks another one had appeared (Conrads). Within a year, there were over 100 pantries in the United States and even one in New Zealand (Conrads). If you want to make a positive change, make a Little Free Pantry, since this will be an inspiration to others to build more.
We interviewed Shannon Ingram, who works for the FDA. This is what she had to say about the food waste problem: “In the United States of America we don’t have a good handle on food waste. Food waste makes up about 30 to 40 percent of the food supply. In other countries such as Scotland, they have organized ways to collect and process food waste and they have less food waste based on consumers’ buying habits. That’s 161 billion dollars worth of wasted food in the U.S. And food waste makes up the largest amount of waste in our landfills. All the energy, water and other resources used to make the food was wasted that could have been used to make something else.”
If we could put this 161 billion dollars worth of wasted food into feeding people who actually could use it, who knows what we could do? We would have a cleaner planet, less wasted money, and less hungry people.
Food is one of the most prime factors of landfills, which can even lead to climate change because of their release in greenhouse gas. However, since most of this food is wasted, and just needs a way to be eaten when it should be eaten, Little Free Pantries are a good way of stopping the problems caused with this, especially since most people buy an excessive amount of food when shopping. These new Little Free Pantries are becoming a great way to help reduce food waste, while at the same time they’re simple to operate and can help feed people in need while reducing food waste and all of its problems. Since food waste creates a lot of problems, why not solve them by making or helping with a Little Free Pantry?
Sources: Capps, Kriston. “What’s the Matter with Little Free Food Pantries?” Bloomberg CityLab, 25 July 2017. Bloomberg.com, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ 2017–07–25/the-little-free-pantry-can-t-fight-hunger. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Deer, Ryan. “UNDERSTANDING THE FOOD WASTE PROBLEM & HOW YOUR BUSINESS CAN HELP.” Roadrunner, 27 May 2021, www.roadrunnerwm.com/blog/ understanding-the-food-waste-problem-and-how-you-can-help#:~:text=When%20food%20w aste%20ends%20up,fertilizers%20used% 20to%20produce%20it. Accessed 2 June 2021.
Kidd, Erin. Little Free Pantry. Independent Tribune, 30 Mar. 2018, independenttribune.com/news/little-free-pantry-offers-food-for-those-in-need/article_eae7708c-343f-11e 8-b10a-5ba0aaae253b.html. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Conrads, David. “With Little Free Pantries, neighbors feed neighbors in need.” The Christian Science Monitor, 21 July 2020, www.csmonitor.com/World/ Making-a-difference/2020/0721/ With-Little-Free-Pantries-neighbors-feed-neighbors-in-need. Accessed 8 June 2021
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