Poughkeepsie Tackles Food Waste and Hunger
Once your brain catches up with your stomach after filling up on hot bread rolls and a savory Italian dish at your favorite restaurant, you will feel full and satisfied, even if there is still another portion-sized meal on your plate. If not taken home, this food on your plate will be thrown out and will spend the remainder of its life in a local landfill.
As much as 40 percent of food or 133 billion pounds of food is wasted annually. Yet, one in four individuals in the City of Poughkeepsie experience food insecurity–inconsistent access to food.
A majority of families and individuals are food secure or are able to have at least a few meals a day, but about 10% of the population has food insecurity. People who lack the means to access food may enroll in SNAP–Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–to aid in purchasing food, but not everyone is eligible or is able to use the program at restaurants or the grocery store. So, many institutions, restaurants or households will donate food to help those who are hungry, but food waste still persists to be an issue.
Leftover muffins, desserts, chicken and other food items may be commonly seen as food waste; however, much of this food made by outside establishments from bakeries to restaurants can donate this food to local food shelters, hospitals and civilians.
“Any leftover pastries are donated to the Heart Center across the street from us, St. Francis, Vassar hospital, and local police and fire stations,” said Kevin Halim, owner and baker of Kelly’s Bakery. “We only bake enough for the day [to reduce food waste], and sometimes guests will be upset with this.”
Institutions like Vassar College that are Food Recovery Program certified will try to use and reuse as much food as possible before donating to external establishments, and when they do, they donate very little because of their food efficiency.
“Our chefs have been trained in batch cooking which equates to us having little to no food left over at the end of service. Whatever is remaining, by following the [ServSafe standards], we can repurpose the food into another menu item,” said Stephen Scardina, Bon Appétit’s Resident District Manager at Vassar. “We are working on implementing a Waste Not program which will measure our kitchen waste with the goal to reduce what staff is discarding.”
As more establishments are keen on reducing their food waste, they will reuse the excess food first, then consider composting like Vassar and will then donate food; however, there are a series of rules implemented to ensure the donated food is safe to eat such as checking for signs of spoilage.
Many food banks or free marketplaces–both a food pantry and a farmers market– like Fairground will make the most of what they receive. Specifically, turning lemons into lemonade.
“We get a lot of apples that are bruised so we use those to make apple sauce, apple crisp, apple butter, and then we put those in the community fridges,” said Jamie Levato, executive director Fairground in Beacon, NY. “We usually give out 3,000–4,000 pounds of food per week and usually around 150 or more households.” We do offer a lot of fresh produce in addition to frozen foods.”
At the end of the day, shrinking food waste could be one step for establishments to continue to produce quality food, while keeping our landfills free of edible food.
