Berkeley’s excellent Maywa Montenegro sent this fine romp through the latest food waste links, each one of which is a winner. Many thanks MM!
The new NRDC report on food waste gets some media attention. “Americans are throwing away 40 percent of food in the U.S., the equivalent of $165 billion in uneaten food each year,” writes Environmental Leader, a trade publication. While losses come at each step in the supply chain — from farm to processor to retailer to household — The Atlantic digs through the report and notes, “by far the most significant point of waste is at the consumer level…. A family of four can lose more than $2,000 per year in uneaten food.” Meanwhile, the Times Green Blog focuses on thepredominant reasons for wastage (science says: inconclusive data!) and the ecological upshot (25% of freshwater resources go into the life cycle of wasted food). Searching for the silver lining, NPR’s Salt blog looks at 5 innovative ways folks around the world are “combating waste and rerouting food to where it’s needed.” And Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland, maintains a website entirely dedicated to wasted food, featuring a FlickR set of funky-shaped veggies, and links to everything from Apps for food recovery programs to recipes for unsellable-peach salsa. Bloom’s gallery is particularly worth a visit, if only to glimpse the Mutato Project, a German photographer’s homage to non-standard food.