Ashley Zanolli has been a food waste warrior for more than 17 years, working on various state and national government initiatives to support sustainable food management, water quality and climate sustainability. While at the Environmental Protection Agency, Ashley’s team developed the community-based social marketing campaign “Food: Too Good To Waste” to inspire behavior change and reduce food wasted at home. Today, she advises on the development and implementation of a national strategy to reduce wasted food and increase organics recycling across the supply chain. On this episode of “Food Lab Talk,” Michiel speaks with Ashley about how her career path has transformed the way she thinks about protecting the environment and addressing climate change; her learnings on how to guide consumer behavior change; and her perspective on the role of government in combating food waste.
Ashley Zanolli: “The timeline for systemic change is rather long, relative to our lifetime. How do you set the stage as if it were a play so that the props we need to build the food system we want are eventually the only ones that are available? And you can do that through policies, through incentives, through different structures so that disparate entities and non-traditional partners start to see what's in it for them in new ways. At this point, given projected climate impacts, security of supply inflation, the stakes are too high not to work together and I think you are de-risking the system when you focus on preventing food waste.”
05:49 Redefining the term “food waste”
07:29 Government’s role in fighting food waste
08:35 Driving action and prevention through comprehensive goal setting
09:43 Amplifying systemic impact via public-private partnerships
13:00 Staying motivated to drive slow-moving change
17:23 Opportunities to fight waste in the system
18:20 Why we need to break down silos and measure differently
21:31 How might we accelerate progress on known solutions?
23:00 Consumer behavior change as the “unlock” to progress
24:10 Incentivizing boots on the ground
25:16 How to: guide systems change
27:02 Focus on the outcome, not the solution
28:20 What it takes to influence a system: translating, listening, and more
30:56 Why you shouldn’t be afraid to ask dumb questions
32:29 Anyone can be an expert
33:36 Doing work “with” not “for” people
35:25 What to look for in a mentor and where to find one
Links
*The views expressed by the guests in this podcast don't necessarily represent the host’s views, nor those of his employer.
What is Food Lab Talk?
A better food system starts with one thing: vision. Food Lab Talk gives global food system changemakers a platform to articulate their vision for the future of food.
The series features interviews with inspiring individuals who are working on the frontlines of many of our most pressing food issues: reducing food loss and waste, enhancing food system transparency, facilitating shifts toward more balanced plant-forward diets, enabling informed individual choices for sustainable lifestyles, and accelerating the transition to a circular food economy.
Join Google’s Michiel Bakker to meet the leaders taking bold action and answering what each of us can do to create a better food system for us all.