Let’s talk about leftovers.
When we’re in the kitchen, we probably aren’t paying much attention to the
little scraps that scrape by—a few extra celery stalks, a heel of old bread, or a bruised brown banana. Our
old, forgotten foodstuffs might not seem like a big deal, but food waste is adding up to a global problem:
in all, we’re wasting 1.3 billion tons of food each year.
Why does so much go to waste?
Nearly one-third of food produced around the world goes to waste because
it simply looks
imperfect. These so-called “ugly foods” get skipped over by
grocery shoppers every day because of their superficial appearance and end up in landfills.
But even picture-perfect, aesthetically pleasing foods get thrown out just
the same: according to a 2012 study by Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans alone throw out
about half of their food, which
is equal to $165 billion each year.
So what can we do with all this perfectly good food?
That’s the question three New York City restaurateurs set out to answer
when they opened their low-waste restaurant called Sunday in
Brooklyn. Located in the Williamsburg neighborhood, the restaurant
serves three meals a day and strives to use every ingredient to the fullest, making the most of every ounce
of food they buy—including their kitchen scraps.
Leftover veggie scraps? Those can be pickled and served later. And what happens
to that pickle brine when it’s done? That can serve as a pleasantly salty, flavorful addition to a new
cocktail. Extra bits of meats and cheese? Wrap them in dough, bake them, and serve them up as gourmet
pastries later.
“Minimizing food waste is one of our top initiatives for 2017,” explained
Todd Enany, one of the partners behind Sunday in Brooklyn. “There are a ton of instances of not only
cross-utilization of our ingredients, but also the use of what most restaurants may consider waste, such as
beet tops and broccoli stems.”
There are also more high-tech ways to help out.
A company in Chicago is taking the fight against food waste into the
digital age with a new web-based donation system.
MealConnect is a tech platform from
the bright minds at Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization the U.S., that lets food
providers like restaurants, coffee shops, and grocery stores donate unsold foodstuffs.
It works like this: companies looking to donate food can register their available inventory on the app.
MealConnect matches them with a nearby food bank in Feeding America’s network in real time, coordinates a
delivery driver, and provides both parties with an estimated pick-up time.
So far, MealConnect has saved 333
million pounds of food—that amounts to about 278 million individual
meals. There’s still a long way to go to achieve Feeding America’s ultimate goal of eliminating hunger in America by 2025, but
keeping all that unsold food out of a landfill is a huge first step.
