Katelan (00:00):
Hi there. Welcome back to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons. Tens of thousands of people use the Commons app to realize the power of our collective spending and find sustainable brands that they can trust. On this show, we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world,
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Right? Y'all we're at Aldi, man, they spilled a bunch of raspberries all over. Maybe that's a good sign that we,
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'm a dumpster again, mess around. So you can just see there's so much good food in here. Fresh strawberries, fresh bananas, a whole thing of fresh bananas. More strawberries.
Katelan (00:39):
Have you seen those dumpster videos where people are digging through grocery store dumpsters and they find crates of perfectly good eggs or boxes of beautiful tomatoes or bags of unopened bagels? I'll
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Go through these boxes when I get home and we'll take out the bad stuff and clean up the good stuff.
Katelan (00:55):
Maybe you've heard of how grocery stores are picky and a little vain about the produce they put out. They only choose the most aesthetically pleasing of the crop and then the rest can go to waste. Judging by their trash grocery stores seem to be like the poster child of food waste. Bad guys. There's no doubt that a lot of edible food goes to waste at grocery stores, but as a whole, they're actually sending 50% less food to landfills than restaurants and us in our own homes and kitchens. But before we dig into that bombshell, let's zoom out around the world. About one third of vettable food is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain. That's about 1.3 billion tons per year. A lot of that ends up in landfills where it generates methane. A really powerful greenhouse gas in the us. Food waste is responsible for over half of methane emissions in landfills.
Katelan (01:54):
In 2020 alone, landfill food waste here released nearly the same amount of emissions as all of California's cars by some reports from farm to table. Over 40% of that food waste happens in our own home kitchens and globally the UN estimates that 60% of food waste comes from households. And we're not just talking about inedible stuff like chicken bones or apple cores. I'm talking about edible food, or at least food that was once edible. The stuff that goes bad in our fridges or gets stale on our counters, or maybe we just throw it out because we don't want to eat it. I'm Kaitlyn Cunningham and today on Second Nature, we are opening up our fridges and pantries to figure out how our community is avoiding food waste at home. We're getting delicious tips on how to eat our most wasted foods before they get icky from the one and only Annmarie Beau, AKA zero waste chef. And we're finding out what kinds of foods we're wasting the most of and how much money we're losing in the process before it gets any stinkier or slimier. We are facing our food waste head on you ready
Katelan (03:11):
For a moment? I want you to imagine yourself as a head of California grown broccoli. You start out as a seed, then grow into a seedling. You sprout new leaves and get taller and wider. You're part of over 14,000 acres of broccoli crops across the United States. After about two to three months of sun consistent watering, maybe some bug spray, you develop little florets. A farmer comes and harvests you. You get dropped into a crate and then the back of a truck, if you're headed to a grocery store, you may be put into a refrigerated truck or get wrapped in plastic. Then a grocery store employee stacks you up on one of those refrigerated shelves in the produce section. Maybe you get a manufactured misty rainstorm every hour on the hour. Then lucky you, someone picks you up. You go from their basket to the conveyor belt to the grocery bag and end up at home in their refrigerator. Now let's pause there.
Katelan (04:16):
Up until now, how many people have been a part of this broccoli story? Your story? Maybe about a dozen people tended to the plant. They used fuel to power the vehicles and move the supplies and the crops. A handful of people did the processing, getting the broccoli ready for sale. Drivers transported you from farms to stores and the grocery store employees stacked you up onto those refrigerator shelves along the way, along your journey, a lot of energy also came into play to power the vehicles, the farm machinery, the refrigeration, even the manufactured rain. So much work has gone into getting you this far so much time, human energy and electricity, not to mention water pest deterrent fertilizers. And now you're in the fridge. Best case scenario, you're cooked up within a few days success. You have become a delicious stir fry or a soup or a fritter. But let's say you're forgotten in the back of a crispr drawer, you start to get a little fuzzy, a little gray, a little mushy.
Katelan (05:25):
Then on one fateful fridge cleanout day, the person who bought you with the best of intentions has to toss you out. When you look at the climate impact of food waste, a lot of focus is rightfully put on the methane that it produces in landfills. But we also lose so much before it even gets to the landfill from the second that broccoli hits the bin because food production accounts for over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. And when we throw that food away, all those emissions, the labor, the water, the money goes to waste with it. It makes me wonder if part of the reason we're wasting so much food is because we're so detached from the source, so detached from all the people and the resources it takes to get it to us. When you pick up that broccoli off the shelf, it can be hard to imagine its journey. We ask you for your food waste tips to find out how you're avoiding or dealing with food waste in your homes. We found out that it just takes a little bit of planning some creativity and some inspiration and guidance from our elders.
Anandi (06:40):
I've been concerned about food waste for as long as I can remember. Mostly due to my my mentalist mother. We were always told to only take what we could eat onto our plate.
Jessica (06:53):
My personal biggest food waste challenge is always herbs. I dunno why I've tried to grow them, but I just can't. They don't seem to grow very well in my kitchen. Maybe I need some expert advice, but I like herbs in nearly all of my meals and I feel guilty for constantly buying them that nearly always come in plastic packets. And I quite often have been known to throw the last bit away because it just goes a bit smushy at the bottom of the pack. I'm getting better at it slowly over time, but it's been my struggle
Cindy (07:27):
Before I would aspirationally purchase produce that I would think I need. And the reality is I actually don't. I would think maybe like three heads of broccoli and a cabbage and some bell peppers. All of that for one person is actually a lot. I tend to supplement my diet with other things and so that has been a big challenge for me to really cut that down. The reality is that a lot of it just ends up getting really moldy.
Amea (07:58):
I am autistic and I have OCD and both of those provide some food challenges for me. I'm definitely more of a picky eater, but I also have a lot of food anxieties and my OCD likes to tell me that food is bad when it hasn't really gone bad yet. Like in my logical brain I know that, oh, that leftover that's in the fridge. Like I can probably eat it and be fine and I'm not gonna get sick and it's not gonna taste bad, but I can't get over the hurdle of just trying it to see if it tastes bad and then I, I have to let it go. So that's something I'm really working on and it comes with a lot of guilt for me. But I try to tell myself, you know, at least I'm trying and I do take preventative sip as much as I can. So
Nick (08:36):
There have been times when, oh, this food has gone bad and now I need to get rid of it. And I feel terrible about that because I didn't eat enough of my spinach that week. There is always some way when you are creative enough and you spend enough time and really care about your food enough, there's always going to be creative ways to have a new meal or even just have the same meal.
Jessica (09:02):
My main tip for reducing food waste is to write a meal plan. It doesn't have to be as structured as specific meals on specific days if that's going too far for you. But each week I write a rough meal plan and I do a quick inventory of what I've got in the kitchen already and I base my meals around using up those things. And the added benefit of that is that I then don't end up buying more of what I already have. 'cause I've already kind of got an idea of in my head of what I have in the kitchen already.
Sierra (09:34):
I honestly started learning about food waste 'cause I lived with my grandparents and they're honestly the first ones who taught me about composting and any like food waste from cooking or from our meals. My grandma would always collect them in like a little yogurt container and show me where to throw 'em in the backyard and we'd bury them.
Shayda (09:53):
I lived in London for a while and it's like the law you have to compost. I do think about food waste a little differently because the bin in the house for the composting, you know, in Seattle and even in London, it's so tiny. And in London we had to line it with like this biodegradable like plastic bag. So if we left it too long or if it got too heavy it would like seep through and it was disgusting and you like did not wanna let that happen before you took it out, just like made me so aware of like how much food we put in it. Like you know, like if I had a Tupperware full of spaghetti and I let it go bad, I would put it in there and it would be full and I would have to take it out. It's just strange to think that I just filled up an entire bin with something I could have eaten in like one sitting. It did make me think more about wasting food. It became my goal to just kind of only put scraps in there. So yeah, it kind of just makes me more aware of like watching the food in the fridge and making sure to like eat it on time and not like ordering food. There is food in the house, things like that. I'm not gonna pretend it's like all very noble. It is mostly because I hate taking that thing out.
Anandi (11:03):
Just being conscious of how much we cook, cooking enough that it gets consumed within, you know, the day or two leads to less wastage conscious of how much we buy in terms of groceries. 'cause it's not just cooked food that gets wasted. It's oftentimes these stuffed refrigerators. You know, there's so much food that's stuffed in all of these refrigerators and freezers that we don't even know about what's sitting at the back of our refrigerator. That's leading to a lot of food waste stage.
Sierra (11:34):
I usually have a ton of leftover veggies and eggs from the week. So usually do like an everything omelet with like all my leftover veggies that haven't molded yet or literally that's mostly what I do. And then I'll have like the cut up fruits on the side. The things that don't fit in the omelet, probably the easiest meal to make.
Jordan (11:54):
Having sandwiches or wraps is always a good way to use it because they're quite a versatile sort of meal in the sense that you can put a lot of different things on it and it works well. You can use a lot of leftovers on a sandwich or a wrap and then you're getting a dairy balanced and nutritious and often tasty meal that uses up a lot of your food that you would otherwise not eat.
Jessica (12:19):
My very favorite fridge cleanout meal is always a Buddha bowl because it sounds so bougie when you call it a bud bowl. But in reality all it is is a bowl full of exactly what you want on your plate at that moment. So I can use up any old bit of veg from the bottom of the fridge drawers in a Buddha bowl. I sometimes use potatoes if I don't have grains. I have added chuney and marinades on. Sometimes I add in tofu 'cause I love it. Sometimes I marinade it, sometimes I can't be bothered. It is my favorite meal. I can use up absolutely anything in it and it looks so colorful. It's usually quite healthy because it's always veg that's left at the bottom of my fridge and needs eating up and it just always hits the spot. It's perfect.
Katelan (13:11):
I have to add one tip that's helped me a lot with my food waste at home. I just use masking tape and a sharpie and I label Tupperware right when it goes in the fridge. So it's super easy to see what's in there at a glance. I loved hearing folks' advice to buy less food. Sometimes you may find yourself in the very privileged position of having more perishable food than you can eat before it goes bad. Or maybe you end up going out to eat more than you planned or you're about to leave for vacation with a fridge full of produce. In those cases, when you catch yourself looking at perfectly edible food that you're pretty sure you're not gonna eat, I think you should definitely consider looking into your friendly neighborhood community fridge. A community fridge is a fridge for the people. Anyone can bring or take food, no questions asked.
Katelan (13:57):
They usually have little pantries too for non-perishables. So if you have food that's unopened and still edible, community fridges are a great way to give back to your community and combat food waste. I'm just a huge fan of these. We have about 20 here in LA and they're totally community run these fridges, save hundreds of pounds of food from waste each year and feed hundreds of people to find a fridge near you. The biggest directory is fridge.org. That's F-R-E-E-D-G e.org. If you don't see one there, you can just Google your city or your state and community fridge and see what you find. You could also try searching on Instagram too. It can be a little hard to find these grassroots mutual aid solutions, but there are more out there than you think. And if you're in LA, you can go to la community fridges.com to see a map of all the ones all over the city. If you can't tell, I really love community fridges, but that's just one of many food waste solutions. Another solution is to eat what you got. So we asked you, what are the food waste items that plague you? What are the things that you find yourself throwing out time and time again, we got that list of foods and we brought it to Anne-Marie Bonne, she's a very crafty plastic free chef. You may know her better by her Instagram handle, zero waste chef or her cookbook by the same name.
Katelan (15:22):
Hi, Anne-Marie
Anne-Marie (15:23):
. Hi Katelan,
Katelan (15:25):
Thanks for joining us today.
Anne-Marie (15:27):
Oh, thanks for having me.
Katelan (15:29):
So I was wondering if you have any tips for how to prevent food waste before we even get to the store?
Anne-Marie (15:35):
Right? Yeah, that's the goal. My number one tip is before you go to the store, shop at home. Mm. If you do that, you'll slash your food waste. So instead of thinking, okay, what am I craving for dinner tonight? And looking for a recipe and jotting down all of the ingredients and then going shopping, look at what you have on hand and then think of something you can make with those ingredients. And if you do that, you'll absolutely slash the amount of food going ea and you'll save a fortune. And I think it's a fun way to cook. You discover combinations and recipes and flavors that you may not otherwise have thought of. And some of my favorite recipes have come from cooking that way.
Katelan (16:22):
I love that tip because I really struggle with keeping my fridge organized. And I think that that's my achilles heel for, for food waste because stuff gets hidden really quickly. And so I like the idea of kind of forcing yourself to go through and not only are you seeing what you have, but you're also seeing things that may have already gone bad. And so you're kind of clearing them out or realizing things that are about to go bad and you're thinking, how can I use this? I love that we asked people on Instagram what the top foods are that they're often wasting in their homes. And we got like 300 responses. We got so many
Anne-Marie (16:53):
Responses. Wow. Yeah. Wow.
Katelan (16:55):
So, so many people responded with a lot of like sad face emojis. Like a lot of people are really bummed about this and they're looking for ways to eliminate food waste. And so I thought I'd go through some of the top things that we saw mentioned. Okay. To see if you have any tips for recipes or just ways that people can stop wasting these foods so much with their sad face emojis. . Okay.
Anne-Marie (17:17):
Yeah. Yeah. No, nobody likes wasting food. Nobody.
Katelan (17:22):
Okay. So easily by and large, the thing that people were wasting the most of was lettuce. And most often we saw like the bagged lettuce. If it's easier, there are sort of two different categories people brought up. It was kind of like what I call the more watery lettuces. Like your romaines and your gem lettuces. Mm-Hmm. . And then a lot of folks were also talking about kind of the leafier greens like spinach and kale. Okay. So I was wondering if that sparks anything for you?
Anne-Marie (17:48):
Well, I mean once they're at the slimy stage, um, you know, compost, you, you don't have to eat, you know, rot food . Yes, yes. It's, it's not a penance, you know, but if they're just looking a little sad, you can shock them back to life in really cold water. So fill a bowl with water and throw some ice cubes and put the lettuce in. Okay. And that should perk it up. You can also put it in soup. I make a lot of soup and I love to have the heartier greens. So like kale and collards usually make ribbons out of those and throw them in the pot of soup at the end. Mm-Hmm. , you can also throw those greens into pesto. You can make pesto out of kale and the other thing, you can eat the stems.
Katelan (18:34):
Okay. Yeah. You
Anne-Marie (18:35):
Have to toss those. So when I cook something with kale or collared or Swiss char, I'll cut those ribs out and then I'll chop them really finely and put them in at the beginning with the onion, saute them with the onion and the garlic and no one even knows that they're in there and they taste delicious. And then you don't toss them when you realize, wow, I can use all these parts. You realize, oh, I have actually a lot of food on hand. Yeah. Because I can eat all these parts.
Katelan (19:03):
It kind of, I like that. 'cause it makes you, it's not a burden anymore. It makes you more grateful. It's not what am I gonna do with this? It's like I have all this stuff.
Anne-Marie (19:09):
Right, right. Yeah. Bonus food.
Katelan (19:11):
Yeah. Bonus food. This is a perfect segue onto the next item that people brought up most frequently, which is fresh herbs. Um, and particular cilantro came up quite often as something that people buy and then they only use some of, and then it kind of gets
Anne-Marie (19:26):
To waste. Right. Yeah. I don't have any numbers on herb waste, but I think it's gotta be one of the most wasted food groups because you do only need three tablespoons, but you have to buy an entire bunch. So in my cookbook actually put a recipe in for all that cilantro because I think it does go to waste. So you just make a chutney out of it. It's so good. You wear it up with uh, some olive oil, tiny bit of sugar, a little bit of salt, garlic, maybe some crushed red chilies. Anyway, just a really simple chutney. It's delicious. And you can use the stems because cilantro stems are mild. Yeah. They taste just like the leaves so you can use the whole thing. So that's a great way to use up cilantro. Yeah. I also put a recipe in my book for tabouli. It's a salad that's parsley based. Yes. It's got a ton of parsley and then some cracked wheat and a little bit of tomato, little bit of cucumber, olive oil, lemon juice, you know, really simple, super healthy. You need a lot of parsley so you know, it's perfect.
Katelan (20:28):
Yeah. Lovely. Hopefully people can use with those fresh herbs, especially if you're using those like plastic clamshells. Oh, it feels like those are, I know it's kind of one of the reasons why I started gardening because I, I, yeah, it's so expensive. It's like $3 to buy a bundle of time in a little thing of plastic and it's like $4 to buy a plant that I've had for like years. So .
Anne-Marie (20:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grow rosemary and thyme. So I needed thyme last night. I just went out and snipped a bit. And you can grow it in the window sill if you don't have a spot. Yeah. If you have a sunny window sill and you can also dry herbs, just hang them upside down, maybe tie a string around them, hang them upside down. Yeah. Or spread them on a cooling rack set inside a cookie sheet, just spread them on there and leave them out. I sometimes put them in my oven. I don't turn the oven on, but I just put them in the oven to kind of protect them and keep them out of the way. And you can put a little sign, don't turn on, and then they dry out in a few days.
Katelan (21:25):
Another big category that came up for folks was just kind of like general vegetables. A lot of people mentioned carrots, celery, tomatoes, green onions.
Anne-Marie (21:34):
Well the easiest thing to do when you have a glut of vegetables is to roast them. So cut them up into bite-sized pieces. Toss them in olive oil, a little bit of salt and pepper, maybe some smashed garlic. I like to do different vegetables on different trays because onions roast slower than tomatoes and you can either eat them the way they are or you can put them in a Frito or you can turn them into soup, put them in a shepherd's pie. Mm. So that, that's a quick way to deal with vegetables, ferment them. You can also ferment, say for some reason you have a big pile of carrots, you know you're not gonna eat them. You can cut them into carrot sticks and then you just pour salt water over them in a jar. You close it. The bacteria yeast on the carrots, they eat the carbohydrates and produce acids and gases and they ferment the vegetables and that preserves them.
Anne-Marie (22:29):
And then you put them in the fridge. We're all gonna keep for like a year. Fermentation's really easy, but we just don't do it as much as we used to. Like the first time I fermented scro, I thought, oh, I'm gonna accidentally kill my family. And I get that question all the time, like, is this safe? And it's, it's very safe because the bad bacteria can't survive in the acidic environment. Yeah. Of um, properly fermented. Fascinating. So yeah. Love it. Yeah, it's amazing. And it actually increases the nutritional value of the food. It's incredible and it's really inexpensive to do. And then another thing I've been doing lately with sad vegetables, especially I braised them delicious. So I had a sad cabbage recently. I sliced it into sort of like slabs of cabbage. Mm-Hmm. take a large pan like a 12 inch skillet, put in a generous amount of fat. You sear the vegetables on each side maybe seven or eight minutes, and then you pour in some liquid. You don't cover them in liquid, you pour in enough liquid to come up maybe a third of the weight of the size of the vegetables, put a lid on and cook them at a very low temperature for maybe an hour. Okay. Unless you've cut them up small and then it will take less time. And then they turn into these silky delectable, decadent, absolutely delicious. So onions, onions are so good. Braised onions.
Katelan (23:55):
Wow.
Anne-Marie (23:56):
Braised potato slices. So I cut them about, well a quarter inch, maybe five eight of an inch thick. And they're all crispy on the out outside and creamy on the inside. Oh my gosh. Oh, they're so good. It's amazing how much flavor you can coax out of sad vegetables.
Katelan (24:14):
I have never braised a vegetable. I'm definitely gonna try that. Oh the potatoes, I mean, and potatoes. Anyway, I'll take it. But yeah, that sounds amazing. Another category that folks brought up was fruit and berries. Bananas and oranges are the things that came up the most. I don't know if you have any ideas for those.
Anne-Marie (24:34):
Well berries you can cook down into a quick sort of sauce, put them on the stove with um, a little bit of sugar and you can even put in a little bit of alcohol if you like. Mm-Hmm. . Um, do you add water to that? Gee, that's in my book also. Let's see, when I have sad berries. Ooh, I, oh, I like to ferment those too actually. I make like a natural soda with sad strawberries. Oh, that's really good. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's super easy too. You just put the berries in a jar with water and some sugar and they'll start to bubble after a few days and then you just strain those out and bottle it and you have this really good soda. I mean baking, you know, sad berries are great for muffins. Bar a Gillette, if you wanna make something that sounds, sounds fancy, but it's actually really simple. You just make pastry, roll it out, put the fruit in the center. You might wanna toss it with some sugar, a little bit of lemon juice, dab some butter on top. If you do butter, fold the pastry over, bake it. If you have berries that are still fine but you don't think you can eat them, you can also freeze them. Freezing food is a great way to preserve it. Yes. And then you have stuff for later in the freezer.
Katelan (25:50):
Okay. There was one more category that came out quite often, which I wanna touch on, which is bread. People often find themselves with either stale or moldy bread.
Anne-Marie (25:59):
Well, once it's moldy it just compost that. But uh, to prevent it from getting moldy again, freeze it. If you're not gonna eat all the bread, just throw it in the freezer. But if it's dry, you can do all kinds of things with it. You can make croutons, you can make french toast, you can grind it up and have breadcrumbs. You can fry them in olive oil and garlic make a crispy topping for salads. You can do all kinds of things with stale bread.
Katelan (26:27):
So food waste kind of seems so pervasive. It's almost like systemic, you know, you kind of have to buy these certain quantities of things that you don't always need. I'm kind of wondering if you have like a mindset or a philosophy that helps you keep your food waste in check.
Anne-Marie (26:42):
Buy less. Buy most of us buy too much food. We wanna eat healthy. Mm-Hmm. . And so we buy all of these fresh fruits and vegetables but uh, you know, they have a short shelf life. A big part of this is planning ahead.
Katelan (26:56):
You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but um, when we have big social events like parties, our holidays, those are times that are just ripe for accruing a lot of food waste. And I was wondering if you have any tips for folks to prep ahead of time or after the fact to prevent food waste at these big food moments in our lives. Yeah,
Anne-Marie (27:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I think over the holidays in the US waste like all kinds of waste goes up by something like 25%. Yeah.
Katelan (27:22):
Yeah. That's wild.
Anne-Marie (27:24):
The week of your big feast. So let's say Thanksgiving, don't shop for your regular meals, eat down the fridge basically. And that way you'll clear out space for all the stuff you need for your big meal and that other food won't go ea. Mm-Hmm. . Because if you have some type of vegetable that's not going into your big meal, well that's just gonna go to waste if you don't eat it. So yeah, eat that stuff. And then for a big meal like that, plan ahead and probably when you've made your menu, maybe remove one or two dishes. If you're like us, people can only eat so much. So if you have six dishes, you don't need to make giant servings for each person.
Katelan (28:10):
Yeah. So
Anne-Marie (28:11):
Keep that mind. You don't need to make giant vets of food if you have several sides. Yeah.
Katelan (28:18):
Perfect. This is great advice. I would've never thought about eating down my fridge a week before, before the meal
Anne-Marie (28:24):
. Yeah. Yeah. Then you make space in there. Lovely.
Katelan (28:28):
Great. Well this has been so amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of your lived advice in these great recipes. I'm excited and I hope that people start cutting down their food waste by eating the food .
Anne-Marie (28:41):
Yeah. And
Katelan (28:42):
Being excited about it.
Anne-Marie (28:43):
Yeah. Like what a great way to, uh, reduce emissions. .
Katelan (28:48):
Well thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.
Anne-Marie (28:51):
Oh, thank you for having me. This was fun.
Katelan (29:00):
When we throw away food, we're also throwing away money. I called up Commons founder, Sanchali Seth Pal to find out how much money and to ponder the question, if food waste is such a big climate solution, why isn't everyone talking about it? Welcome back St. Charlie.
Sanchali (29:19):
Thanks Katelan. Good to be back.
Katelan (29:22):
So we are producing a lot of food and unfortunately we're throwing a lot of it away.
Sanchali (29:27):
That is very true. Here in the US we throw away about 30 to 40% of the food we produce. That's because it either spoils or spills in supply chains is wasted by retailers, restaurants, or even us consumers. Nearly half of all wasted food, 46% happens in our homes. So that means each of us is wasting an average of 161 pounds of food a year, a pound every two to three days.
Katelan (29:55):
If I try to imagine like it's the end of the year and everyone in the United States has like a bag full of 160 pounds of food and just throws it in the trash. That's insane. That's so much food.
Sanchali (30:06):
That's crazy. It's hard to even imagine. And it's not just households, restaurants are also contributing a similar amount, about 163 pounds per person per year. The good news is that retail, like grocery stores contribute the least to food waste. Only about 26 pounds per person per year.
Katelan (30:25):
Yeah. That was surprising to me. What about higher up in the food supply chain, like at farms and things like that?
Sanchali (30:31):
Yes. About 15% of food emissions come from waste in the supply chain itself, which can be due to bad storage or mishandling leading to the food going bad or being unusable.
Katelan (30:41):
So we're definitely losing food at every step, which is unfortunate from farms to production to our homes. But it sounds like we, like as individuals and consumers, we actually have the biggest responsibility here.
Sanchali (30:54):
Yeah. It's super interesting and kind of a rare case when it comes to sustainability solutions.
Katelan (30:59):
What do you mean?
Sanchali (31:00):
I mean like there's lots of solutions that we can influence at the household level, whether it's public transport, renewable energy, even clothing. But most of the time that's us trying to influence companies or influence government to make changes. What's really interesting about food waste is it's a direct action. There's a sizable impact we can make completely on our own. We can literally make changes just by buying what we need and eating what we have before it goes bad.
Katelan (31:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I like the sound of that despite how much personal power we have when it comes to food waste. It's kind of surprising to me that more of us aren't talking about it. Like it's not a headliner climate solution. I feel like it doesn't get as much coverage as renewable energy or even something like plant-based eating.
Sanchali (31:42):
Yeah. You know, that is a really good point. It's hard to know why food waste doesn't get more visibility. I mean it could be because companies or governments don't really have obvious incentives to produce less.
Katelan (31:53):
Right. We need to get some money involved because of capitalism .
Sanchali (31:58):
Yes, exactly. And then on the other hand, like for us as individuals, we feel guilty about food waste and it's often easier to just not talk about it.
Katelan (32:07):
For sure. I totally feel that. I mean, especially if you're going to the store and making your own food instead of getting delivery or getting takeout, it feels like hey, at least about spending extra money. Like gimme a break. I bought my groceries. .
Sanchali (32:22):
Exactly. I mean, buying your own groceries and cooking a meal for yourself is amazing. It's probably better for our health. Um, there can be sustainability benefits, but the thing is not all the time NPR actually found some really interesting data on that.
Katelan (32:36):
Oh, okay. On delivery.
Sanchali (32:38):
Yeah, on delivery from restaurants. Okay. But also from grocery stores and meal kit services, they found that sometimes that can actually be better from an emissions perspective than driving to a grocery store or restaurant yourself.
Katelan (32:51):
This goes against everything I know to be true .
Sanchali (32:54):
I know it's so surprising. Right. But if you think about it, it starts to make sense when you order delivery from a restaurant or a meal service, you're receiving just exactly the amount of food that you need for that meal. Right. And the route to get to is more efficient. 'cause there's just like one person delivering food to a bunch of different people at once in bigger cities. Sometimes they're even on e-bikes or in e vehicles using greener modes of transport.
Katelan (33:18):
Got it. So it's the more efficient transportation that can make this a more sustainable option.
Sanchali (33:23):
Exactly. Actually a lot of the emissions from your food comes from the travel to go get your food, but it also comes from the food waste. And so with grocery delivery, sometimes you might actually be ordering more frequently in smaller quantities. Mm-Hmm. resulting in less food waste in addition to the savings from the transit emissions.
Katelan (33:43):
But with restaurants and meal kits, there's also a lot of like plastic waste that comes into play. Right.
Sanchali (33:48):
Totally. We have to think about this. It's not just about emissions. That was what this study looked at was just the emissions of delivery. But packaging waste is a big consideration as well.
Katelan (33:58):
I think there's an opportunity here, especially for folks who are struggling with food waste for meals that they're cooking at home. Maybe there's an opportunity to try a meal kit service as sort of like a strategy to see how little food you need for certain meals.
Sanchali (34:14):
Yeah. I really like that idea actually as like meal kits as a way to learn about portioning. And it's not just about climate reducing food waste, it's also about saving money because from an economic perspective, we're way over buying food over $1 trillion of food is wasted every year. And that makes a big difference to our wallets.
Katelan (34:34):
That is huge. That's a ton of money.
Sanchali (34:37):
Yeah. And I mean a trillion dollars, what does that mean for us? A study from Penn State broke this down and it was published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. They found that the average household in 2020 spent $1,866 on wasted food. That means Americans are spending more each year on wasted food than they are on gasoline for their cars or on clothing and shoes.
Katelan (35:01):
$1,800 already sounded like a lot of money, but when you compare it to the fact that we're spending less on the gasoline in our cars than we are on the food that we're just throwing away, that is, that is wild.
Sanchali (35:12):
Exactly. I mean, I feel like that should be motivation enough for anyone. Um, and part of the reason is because some of the items that spoil fastest are the ones that are most expensive. Mm-Hmm. according to Feeding America. Dairy for instance, is the food item we toss most.
Katelan (35:29):
Got it. Dairy comes into play once again, . Are there any systemic solutions out there? I mean, I know that we need more composting on sort of the waste side of things. We need more access to composting drop offs and pickups in our cities. But what about systemic solutions before the food even hits the bin?
Sanchali (35:46):
Yes, for sure. One thing that's kind of interesting is that California just passed a ban on sell by dates, which could help with this.
Katelan (35:54):
Oh, okay. So it's like the expiration dates.
Sanchali (35:56):
Exactly. So apparently there are over 50 different ways these dates are communicated today. And a lot of the reason why we throw away food is because some of those dates pass and we don't really understand what they mean. But starting in July of 2026 in California, we'll see only two phrases used. Best if used by which means that's when you should use it for peak quality and used by which is meant to communicate product safety.
Katelan (36:22):
Got it. That adds so much clarity. It will be so much less confusing.
Sanchali (36:26):
Totally agree. Hopefully that means people will better understand what those dates mean and way less food will be thrown out just because that date was kind of confusing.
Katelan (36:35):
So it sounds like there are a lot of solutions that we can take into our own hands. I can't wait.
Sanchali (36:41):
Me too. I'm really excited about this. I feel excited about going home and trying to use all the food in my fridge and spend less money on groceries next week.
Katelan (36:48):
Amazing. Me too. Thank you.
Sanchali (36:51):
Thanks Katelan. This was fun.
Katelan (36:53):
Bye.
Sanchali (36:53):
Bye.
Katelan (36:55):
Food, food,
Sanchali (36:56):
Food,
Katelan (36:56):
Food. Food is delicious. It's a gift from the earth and it takes a lot of time and energy. The best way to avoid food waste at home is to eat the food plan ahead. Buy less, maybe try some meal prep. If you can't eat it, give it to your neighbors in a community fridge or give it away in your buy nothing group. If you haven't fallen in love with buy nothing groups yet. We did a community episode on them a few weeks ago. Highly recommend if you have some food that's gone bad, compost it. Compost. If your city collects food waste for compost or has drop off sites, awesome. If not composting at home is easier than it seems. We did an episode on this last season. Check it out, check, check it out, check it out, check it out. Even if you can't compost your food, I encourage you for just a couple weeks to collect your food waste in a bin in your freezer.
Katelan (37:44):
This way you can start accounting for it. You know, it'll really help you come face to face with the kinds of food you throw away. And it may help you better get a handle on where to best focus your food waste efforts. Preventing food waste is a climate solution that seems small, a lemon Ryan here, maybe some slimy lettuce there. But we have the power to make a really big collective impact right from our own kitchens. And I think that's super inspiring. Thanks to our listeners who led us into their kitchens to hear some of their food waste tips today. You heard from —.
Katelan (38:28):
This episode was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. If you want sustainability insights, tips, and data every week, follow us on Instagram at Second Nature Earth. I can't believe it, but we just have one more episode this season and just in time for Black Friday and all the fast fashion that comes with it. We are talking about what it takes to build and support a more sustainable fashion industry. Until then, show some love to your leftovers. See you next time.
Cindy (39:03):
What you guys do is amazing. I've been binging your podcasts episodes for for a very long time and just listening to it over and over. So thank you guys so much.