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Regardless of how you’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving this year, you can still keep wasted food out of the picture by reaching for your favorite tips and tricks to avoid throwing out good ingredients and your holiday meal favorites! Check out some of our tips below.
Ways to waste less food this Thanksgiving:
Posts Tagged ‘food waste’
Stuff the Turkey, Not the Trash
Reduce food waste with this 30 day challenge
We look at January 1st as a new chapter, a time to start fresh. However, if you find the idea of drafting up a new list of New Year’s resolutions a bit too abstract, our 30-day wasted food challenge might be a fit, focusing on doing small tasks each day in order to build habits that will stick.
Forty percent of all food produced in the US goes uneaten. Wasted food is a major contributor to multiple environmental and social problems that we face today – and most of this waste is happening right under our noses! ReFED estimates US households alone waste 76 billion pounds of food annually, costing each household an average of $1,800 per year!
Greening the Holidays with Less Food Waste
Every year, a large amount of food goes to waste during the holiday season. According to the EPA, food waste accounts for about 24 percent of the municipal solid waste across the country. Without mindful planning, this number can only get worse.
Food is an important part of holiday celebrations, so that means we buy more, cook more and, on average, waste more during this time of year. The spoiled produce, expired products, and uneaten leftovers contribute to this waste which, most often, ends up in landfills. Food waste makes landfills the third largest human-related methane emission source in the country. The process of growing, processing and transporting food, and eventual hauling of the food waste also consumes a large amount of energy and generates emissions, polluting the air.
The skinny on food waste; new incentives for composting programs
Residential food scraps collection services and community food scraps drop-off spots are popping up across the state. Both are a great way to compost your food scraps locally if you can’t at home. Residential food scraps collection services collect food scraps at your curb while community food scraps drop-off spots allow you to drop your food scraps off at a designated location and time, such as your local farmers market or community garden. In return, the compost from these programs is used to build local healthy soils. Find a food scraps drop-off spot or residential food scraps collection service near you.
Get the dirt on composting
Composting Reduces Trash and Provides Healthy Organic Matter for Your Garden
America’s Municipal Solid Waste – By the Numbers
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in this country in 2017 (the most recent information available) was 267.8-million tons. That’s the equivalent of just over 4.5-pounds of waste per person per day. Paper and paperboard products made up the largest percentage of total MSW-generated materials; 25-percent or 67-million tons. Food waste made up the second-largest percentage; 15.2-percent or 40.7-million tons. At 35.2-million tons, or 13.1-percent of total generation, yard waste (grass, leaves, tree and brush trimmings) was the fourth largest material category (just behind plastic at 13.2-percent). Wood accounted for 6.7-percent or 17.94-million tons.
About 139.6-million tons (roughly 52-percent) of America’s MSW ended up in landfills. The largest component of landfilled waste; just under 22-percent or approximately 30.7-million tons; was food. Paper and paperboard made up just over 13-percent, while wood accounted for 8.7-percent and yard waste; 6.2-percent.
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Latest News Headlines
- Appreciating kinship on a trip to Great Camp Santanoni
- Gov. proposes crackdown on unlicensed cannabis storefronts
- Jones: State needs to do more for fire departments
- U.S. and Canada Reach an Agreement on Diverting Asylum Seekers
- 20-megawatt battery installation proposed in Raquette Lake
- Covered for calamity at Siamese Ponds
- Two charged in Keeseville homicide
- APA denies boathouse variance
- Fishery managers cut back on Lake Champlain trout stocking
- APA closer to wild forest roads policy
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