Browsing Tag

food waste

Behind the Plate


July 25, 2016
Photo credit: Erik Nordlund

Photo credit: Erik Nordlund

Tristram Stuart, Founder of Feedback and Toast Ale, has been passionate about food waste from an early age. His Ted Talk: The global food waste scandal has been viewed over a million times, and his environmental work has had an impact in dozens of countries worldwide—both Tristram’s words and actions speak loud and clear.

You have been passionate about food waste since you were 15—you bought pigs and fed them using the scraps from your local grocery and bakery. What about this experience made you realize that food waste is such a significant issue?
I realized that most of the food I was giving to my pigs was in fact fit for human consumption. It was not just scraps like vegetable peelings—it was perfectly fresh, surplus meals from my school cafeteria, bread from the local bakery, and even supermarket products taken off the shelf for stock rotation reasons rather than because the food was no longer good. So I ate it with my pigs. I was environmentally aware. I knew that deforestation, mostly to turn virgin forests into farmland for food production, threatens humanity and many other species with extinction—risking catastrophe. The idea that we were throwing away good food was maddening and yet the solution was so simple—eat it.

In 2009 you founded Feedback to help combat the global food waste crisis. Please tell us about Feedback.
Feedback attacks food waste at every level of the food supply chain, from farm to consumer. We use the principles of the food waste pyramid, a hierarchy of strategies that prioritizes waste reduction and elimination. If food surplus is unavoidable, it must be kept in the food supply chain through charitable redistribution, upcycling food to a new product, or, if not fit for human consumption, using it to feed livestock. Only after all those options are exhausted should we turn to compost and anaerobic digestion.

Feedback has three core campaigns. Feeding the 5000 raises awareness and galvanizes public action to reduce food waste and use surplus better. The Gleaning Network keeps farm-level food surplus within the food system, and our investigative work looks at causes of food waste on farms in food-exporting countries. The Pig Idea is campaigning to change legislation that prevents catering surplus being fed to livestock. Feedback has also set up the Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network which helps innovators find new ways, or popularize old ones, to use surplus food.

What is Feeding the 5000, and how did it come about?
The first Feeding the 5000, in London in 2009, was meant to be a one-off event. We decided we would make an attention-grabbing statement about food waste by feeding over 5000 people with ingredients that would have otherwise gone to waste. But it created new, powerful coalitions with concrete actions to fight food waste. It was too powerful a tool to do just once. So we set up Feedback, with Feeding the 5000 as our flagship campaign. Feeding the 5000 has now been replicated in over 30 major cities in every continent except Antarctica.

Food waste statistics are staggering—over $218 billion spent growing, transporting and disposing of wasted food; and 63 million tons of food wasted annually. But many individuals are unaware. What needs to be done to get the word out about this significant global issue?
The media, including social media, can have an incredibly powerful impact. We need to get everyone talking about the financial, environmental and social costs of food production and waste. Initiatives like Foodstand are a great example.

What are some #NoFoodWaste practices that you incorporate into your daily life?
I am a freegan, or ‘dumpster-diver’ as it’s also known. Freeganism—eating food that otherwise would be thrown away—is a double attack on our insanely inefficient and wasteful food system. Firstly, it reduces demand for extra food production whilst reducing waste. Secondly, it is a delicious protest that raises awareness about the simplicity of the solution—we just need to eat what we produce.

Do you think that food waste is the largest issue currently surrounding our food system?
The largest issue facing our food system is demand-driven deforestation. It explodes my mind to acknowledge the fact that we are turning eons-old bastions of biodiversity and cultural diversity, hyper-effective climate change buffers, deep reservoirs of water and invaluable natural capital into farmland to produce food that is later discarded. Reducing food waste is just one bullet that we need to use to stop this.

We do not need to dramatically increase food production worldwide, despite the conventional wisdom that says we do. Population growth is slowing down. The real driver of the projections showing increased demand for food is that as people’s incomes increase, so does their demand for meat and dairy. So another bullet in our arsenal must be to move towards a more plant-intensive diet.

What I like about fighting food waste is that not only does it help us fight deforestation and climate change, it also changes people’s consciousness that we can win this fight. Sometimes the fight seems hopeless, but something about food waste makes folks rethink our food habits. Once you have people onboard with the idea that we don’t need to cut down virgin forests to produce food that we’re just going to throw away anyway, they may be more receptive to the idea that the ultimate problem is actually the deforestation itself.

Food issues have barely made it into the race for President. If the future President were to consider food waste solutions, how should they be addressed?
Use the USDA and FDA to standardize confusing expiration date labels so that consumers aren’t throwing away food needlessly. A study in the UK estimated that date label confusion drives 20% of avoidable consumer food waste. Encourage supermarkets to be transparent about their in-store and supply chain waste. Encourage all supermarkets—and cafeterias and stadiums and music festivals and restaurants—to connect with food redistributors to make use of their surplus. Use the USDA and FDA to standardize across all states one set of rules for using surplus food to safely and sustainably feed livestock. And finally, tax food waste.

Buy, grow or forage more plants and eat them while they are deliciously fresh, or preserve, or give to others to eat.


How do you define good food?
I love food that tastes amazing and has a story. I recently cooked a stew of road-kill deer, foraged mushrooms, waste-fed pork, and homegrown vegetables. That particular meal had basically zero impact in terms of driving demand for food—it was “off-grid” if you will. There was something about the taste of the stew that made it special even if I had not told you the stories of the ingredients, but the story was eye opening for many of the people I cooked it for.

That first food ‘waste’ meal I shared with my pigs was beautiful fresh bread from my local baker. For me it is symbolic of the food waste problem, and so perhaps kismet that I recently established Toast Ale—a beer made with surplus bread from sandwich manufacturers that would otherwise have been wasted, that gives all profits to Feedback.

Date labeling laws are key to food waste prevention. We understand bills were recently introduced to standardize these laws—are we at a potential turning point in food waste prevention?
Expiration date label standardization is a no-brainer. It’s ridiculous that different companies use different labels to mean the same thing, or use the same wording to mean different things, depending on the context. Of course consumers are confused into throwing away good food unnecessarily. So expiration date label standardization is very low-hanging fruit in the fight against food waste. We hope that a win on this issue will create momentum to fight for food waste reduction across other fronts, too.

Donation is a key food waste recovery tactic. Why is it so hard to donate food?
Cold-chain logistics can be an issue, although this complication is why we advocate for pre-established links between those with surplus and those who can redistribute it. But sometimes supermarkets or other companies with surplus food don’t have the direct incentive to manage the logistics of setting up the connection in the first place. It is our job as campaigners and consumers to make sure they have the incentive to donate food. We can create that incentive in the form of public relations. We should shun supermarkets and restaurant chains who have not connected with food redistribution organizations, and we should celebrate those that are going above and beyond to make sure that 100% of their surplus is used.

What are some of the most astonishing items you’ve found wasted behind grocery stores during your “bin inspections”?
Fresh sushi. It’s resource-intensive to produce, either involving the fishing of wild stocks or the use of resource-intensive fish farms, and sometimes involving the use of refrigerated air-freight. Yet there’s a lot of sushi behind grocery stores.

What is your favorite meal to prepare?
Anything that involves surplus, foraged or homegrown ingredients that can be shared with friends and family.

I’m writer who has become a campaigner. I first wrote The Bloodless Revolution in 2006, followed by Waste: Uncovering the global food scandal in 2009 (which led me to organize the first Feeding the 5000 and set up Feedback). I would like to write another book.

What’s always in your fridge? What do you use it for / how do you use it?
The problem with fridges is that they hide food away where we forget about it, like a tomb where food is left to rot. I’m much keener on preserving food in Kilner or Mason jars where the autumn harvest is bottled away—plums, cherries, quinces, apples, pears, tomatoes all in a colorful array, stacked shelves—reminding you to eat them up throughout the year.

Your good food wish?
That we value to the food we produce and stop wasting it.

#NoFoodWaste Features

Food Waste: A Pervasive Problem with Abounding Solutions

June 17, 2016
Photo by Summer Rayne Oakes

Photo by Summer Rayne Oakes

This post was written by Emily Summerlin, an Ambassador for Foodstand, a community aiming to build a more informed community around good food and to bring good eating choices to all. Here she covers the food waste epidemic, including background on and implications of the issue, the release of the ReFED Roadmap to Reduce US Food Waste report, and Foodstand’s #NoFoodWaste campaign.


The United States “spends $218 billion a year, or 1.3% of GDP, growing, processing, and transporting food that is never eaten.” Put simply by Sam Kass, NBC’s Senior Food Analyst, “that is insane.”

In addition to the huge economic costs this problem incurs for the United States, this is tragic not only in the sense that one in seven Americans is food insecure, but also in that this wasted food emits a harmful stream of greenhouse gases as it decomposes in the landfill, further contributing to global climate change. It is incomprehensible that this issue, so monstrous and detrimental to our economy and human and environmental health, has only recently emerged into the mainstream spotlight and found its way into the consciousness of American eaters, largely thanks to a segment on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight last summer.

Fortunately, this momentum has kept the food waste epidemic in the spotlight, with a number of new organizations and campaigns focusing on redistribution of would-be wasted food popping up all over the world. The World Resources Institute and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently completed a study highlighting the countries leading the fight against food waste; the Love Food Hate Waste campaign in the UK serves to raise awareness about the need to reduce food waste and to help consumers take action; and Imperfect Produce in the San Francisco Bay Area delivers ‘ugly produce’, fruits and vegetables that don’t fit grocery stores’ cosmetic standards, to consumers. These are just a few examples of actors on all scopes and levels presently making a difference in the sweeping worldwide movement to end food waste.

Additionally, one of the more notable publications in the space is the recent release of ReFED’s Roadmap to Reduce US Food Waste, a comprehensive report laying out the plan to reduce the United State’s food waste by 20% through a number of feasible, cost-effective, and scalable solutions. The report boasts a new approach to looking at the food waste issue as the first comprehensive report to examine the food waste problem and lay out solutions using economics and data analysis.

The basics of the strategy and actions the report lays out are organized under the four pillars of education, policy, innovation, and financing. Without getting too into the weeds, the bottom line finding after the extensive research and modeling that went into the creation of the report is that “an $18 billion investment in 27 solutions to reduce US food waste by 20% will yield $100 billion in net societal economic value over a decade,” a figure that includes tons of food recovered, gallons of water saved, business profit, consumer savings, tons of greenhouse gas emissions reduced, and jobs created.

One key image in the report is a curve laying out 27 solutions ranked by their potential impact vs. cost in three categories: prevention, recovery, and recycling. The solutions that came out on top for greatest economic value per ton were standardized date labeling, consumer education campaigns, and packaging adjustments; while the solutions with most diversion potential were centralized composting, centralized anaerobic digestion, and water resources recovery facilities with anaerobic digestion. While the solutions with the most diversion potential do require a large amount of planning and capital investment, the diversion that will come from consumer education campaigns is substantial.

This means that as individuals, we can take action right now and make a huge difference. At present, 43% of food waste occurs in homes, which equals 27 million tons of food wasted each year. Hopefully as a result of the report’s findings, date labeling laws and consumer education campaigns will begin rolling out soon, but right now it is in the consumers’ hands to educate ourselves and do everything we can to reduce food waste in our own lives.

The first step in doing this is to change our attitudes about food waste, and think instead in terms of wasted food. The word “waste” implies something old, useless, and without value, but the 63 million tons of food being wasted in the U.S. are perfectly edible, nourishing, and delicious. There are numerous resources that provide tips on smarter grocery shopping and how to cook with parts of fruits and vegetables you normally wouldn’t utilize. One such resource is Foodstand’s #NoFoodWaste campaign that the community is centering around for the month of June. The campaign encourages Foodstand users to post their best tips, recipes, and news regarding food waste reduction throughout the month, and serves as a great source of inspiration for taking action to be a waste-free consumer and finding creativity in the kitchen.


Instructions for making agua fresca with fruit just past its prime from food writer @JenniferEmilson


A ‘Behind the Plate’ interview with Keith Carr, City Harvest’s Healthy Neighborhoods Manager by Foodstand team member @annefood


A recipe for roasted broccoli stem and fennel soup from food writer @munchiemummy


A tip on regrowing veggies from their scraps with just sunshine and water from @SallyRogers of Nibble market

In addition to making changes to your own shopping and cooking habits, look for organizations in your area that focus on fighting food waste through food recovery, either through saving “ugly” produce from rotting in the field or by facilitating donations to food banks. Acting on these individual solutions will enable us to in turn scale up the solutions as a society and touch on the three pillars of the solution that ReFED lays out beyond education: policy, innovation, and financing. Food waste is a truly pervasive issue that not only affects our environment and communities on multiple levels, but on the positive side presents numerous areas for improvement and avenues for taking action.


It’s a #NoFoodWaste November on Foodstand!

November 2, 2015
Imperfect apples are perfectly delicious. Ph: @sugardetoxme

Imperfect apples are perfectly delicious. Ph: @sugardetoxme


