Last spring, I spent my semester at USC through Duke in LA. While there, I became familiar with the clear and present homelessness problem in which, for example, an entire neighborhood has turned into blocks and blocks of homeless tenters stacked almost on top of each other. These tents have become so established that from time-to-time you can actually see the mailman making deliveries to them. While it is admirable that the city doesn’t disrupt this living community, the people living there have little access to food or water.
During the same semester in Los Angeles, I visited a Subway shop and ordered a sandwich. When I asked for some avocado, I proceeded to witness the woman behind the counter cut the top half open, see a brown spot, and then toss the entire avocado into a garbage. I was shocked. I immediately asked what she had done and why, and her argument was based on our culture’s newfound need to make all food aesthetically pleasing, no bruising was acceptable. What made even less sense was that she said there were laws that prevented stores from redistributing food that has not been eaten. While the woman couldn't do much to ease my frustration as homeless beggars stood outside and a whole avocado was sitting in the trash, I knew I wasn’t going to solve any problems by getting angry.
Up to 50 percent of the food that is produced in the United States alone is wasted, and I realized Los Angeles wasn’t the only place this battle would need fighting.
Now back on Duke’s Campus, I have been weary as to what I can do to prevent food waste. Duke being a campus that predominantly hosts students in dorm rooms, many of us here are forced to eat out often. This corresponds to more trash, more large portions and more leftovers. Thankfully, a group of students who similarly want to take action have come together to form a Take Action Against Food Waste Group.
At the first meeting, however, we found ourselves facing fundamental challenges. If we want to redistribute to those in need, how do we get someone to transport the food? Which stores do we focus on first? What are the ways we can make food waste into a business model? As a result I want to highlight some models that are working locally and around the world:
TGTG is an app developed by a team in Copenhagen that looks to a loophole in the law that prevents shops from selling unused produce. The strategy is that any restaurant or cafe that signs up for the app pre-determines how much food waste they may have on any given day. Based on that, they put available TGTG orders up on the app for anyone to buy throughout the day. On the consumers side, you can choose from a number of restaurants in the area, read a description of what the contents would usually be, or choose a place that serves buffet style. Once a customer has chosen what food they want, they can go ahead and buy a meal from the app for a price ranging from two to five dollars. The customer must go to the restaurant/cafe during an allotted time slot, usually the last 15 minutes until the locations closing time. Upon arrival, the people working there will either hand the TGTG user a bag full of goodies or an empty box to fill for themselves. While this doesn't rid of the homelessness problem, it does rid of the transportation problem, and shows that food waste can be an opportunity to make a profit. The founders see the for-profit side of TGTG as a starting off point, that will lead to a larger food waste hub that can serve more underprivileged communities. So far they have saved 13,344 meals and the company was launched in October 2015.
With an ongoing recycling revolution, less than one percent of Sweden’s household waste ends up in a landfill. The remaining waste is recycled in various ways, one of the most important streams being their food waste. What is extremely effective in their system is the efficient network of vacuum tubes lining the undergrounds of cities, collecting waste, food waste and recyclables separately. The food waste receptacles suck all the cities food waste into one place where it is converted into biofertilizer and biogas that can be used to generate electricity and fuel. Currently their city’s bus systems run on a 50-50 mix of natural gas and biofuels, but as the collection grows they plan to move towards more biogas. Similarly to TGTG, this method avoids problems of transportation, offering collection throughout cities. If this were not done, all this food waste would sit in a landfill, useless, emitting methane, as it does in the U.S.
Food waste doesn't only occur once the food has reached a hungry shopper or big restaurant- a big contributor to the problem is the food that is wasted at farms themselves. When crops grow into an atypical shape or color, it’s discarded for not fitting our cookie-cutter standards. Two Duke seniors teamed up to help redirect this unnecessary waste, by collecting the produce bi-weekly and dropping it off to loyal subscribers. This creates an opportunity to save money and do some good locally; if you want to read more about the start-up check out this article.
So, while there are good ideas being put into action in the field of food waste, there is still a lot more to be done and a lot of opportunity being forgone. Start-ups like Ungraded Produce and Too Good To Go highlight the stark contrast in actions that can be taken that can be proven as effective business models that also combat food waste. Landfills, incineration plants and dumps aren't something we think about every day, likely because they represent something dirty in our society, but will continue to require attention as our population grows. If you cared to look into it, I’m sure you would find a hazardous or non-compliant trash deposit somewhere much closer to where you live than you realized, as many do once damage has already been done to the surrounding bioregion. By taking steps to avoid food waste, you help landfills produce less methane and leachate, help people get affordable, healthy food and hopefully learn something in the process.
Eliza Grace is a Trinity junior. Her column, "the green wave," runs on alternate Thursdays.
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