Chris Edmonds

Food Waste 4/22: Earth day has been a treat. I marked my one year anniversary of my bike accident with beautiful laps of prospect park this morning. Then I get out to the community garden and studied for the LEED AP exam and watched the flowers grow. I walked over to the food coop and bought some fresh local veggies! Today I have thrown away a whisker of onion and that's it, though dinner will surely bring some more tossing. A few notable items thrown away in the last few days: a partial bag of chips from chipolte after the guacamole was gone, their were so few of them I didnt find them worth saving, a package of feta cheese that went back months ago, i ate some of it but it's quiet stenchy and I think eating a lot would give my stomach some discomfort. On the net negative side I asked for a small plastic bag from the cleaning staff and rescued the popcorn and saved it in our BE snack drawer and I've been finding ways to incorporate the kefir that is going bad into yogurt sauces! A few food waste concepts I'm still pondering:

-where is the margin of waste that is worth acting on, tracking, changing behavior over? If you throw away the peanut butter clinging to the sides of the container that seems admissible, maybe not something to we need solve by changing policy, norms, etc. But a half plate of leftovers for me is across the line. What should that line be called? How do we mark and act on it knowing that differs from person to person?
-how much food waste happens at restaurants? we asked for our food to be boxed when we went out and I quickly gathered all the side dishes and dumped them on my plate so they would all be included. 
these two questions bring my to number 3:
-scope 1, 2, and 3 food waste: I've been thinking about the food waste that I am indirectly responsible for, and the maybe the emissions framework scope 1,2, and 3 is helpful here. (Quickly to define terms: Scope 1 emissions are directly emitted at my house, scope 2 emissions are emitted at the generating stations to be consumed on site, and scope 3 are emissions generated as inputs to other things I consume.) It's important to note that the definitions of these scopes is related to how directly you caused them to occur, with scope 1 you are flipping the switch, scope 2 someone else is flipping the switch for you, and scope 3 someone is flipping a switch some another person is doing some work for your sake. Applied to food waste, Scope 1 could be food I personally throw out (this includes during storage, prep and post-cook). Scope 1 emissions can be for an individual, a family, and site, an organization, so Scope 1 food waste could be the same, such that Scope 1 food waste could be from me or anyone in my house who is cooking for me, or anyone in the organization subject to the accounting. Scope 2 is food that is thrown out for the sake of what's on my plate but was not thrown out by me (like the honey nut cheerios that didn't make it into a bag or scraps at the restaurant that never make it to my plate. [However, I would suggest that anything that makes it to the plate is now my direct responsibility and therefore scope 1]). Scope 3 food waste is a little harder to define but I'd suppose it is the food waste that is wasted by the organizations I patronize to get the good I are. Therefore, scope 2 food waste would be the clippings from the chives I ate that were thrown away while the scope 3 would be the wasted flour the restaurant didn't use to make the bread the other people at the restaurant were eating. Another example of Scope 3 waste would also be the avocados that went bad at the grocery store I go to, or the pallet of onions that fell on the floor in the distribution center that serves my grocery store. Scope 3 would also include all the heels of bread that are thrown away at Acme Bread Co. so that I never get a heal at my local sandwich shop. Scope 3 does not include all food system waste, just the waste by the organization I fund along the supply chain. 

In a quick google search I didn't see anyone using the enumerated 1 2 and 3 scopes for food waste, but WRI seems to have a great framework for defining scope for food waste accounting here: https://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/REP_FLW_Standard.pdf 
It is one answer to a bunch of the questions I've brought up here including Q: "Do you count inedible waste as food waste?" A: YES! That is affirming considering I have been tracking my onion peels and avocado pits quite diligently. 

Food waste log - Other than the avocado pits, bananas peels, and tea bags that I usually report, I decided to keep the veggie clipping in the freezer and make broth from them when I have a collective mass. I really like the veggie broth bouillon that I usually use, but it will be good to try something different. I also must report that a small percentage of the salad I rescued outside the conference room did go to waste, the cherry tomatoes were fermenting and i tried to liven it up with more greens and sprouts but I could only go so far. 

One interesting question i've been coming across when deciding if something qualifies as "Food Waste" is: what is food? Is the peel of a lemon food? It can certainly be used as delicious (and even better smelling!) zest.. Is the peel of an onion food? A banana peel? What about the central stalk of broccoli? I am in the habit of chopping that all up and tossing it the stirfry, but most folks toss that stalk out. What about the bottoms of asparagus? Most of the time it edible, some of the time its too fibrous to process in your teeth. The other question this begs is for whom? Food "fit for a king" or a Michelin star restaurant? For one of the 50 million americans living in food insecurity? For livestock and pets? For worms and other decomposers! I'd like to continue moving towards being quite inclusive of what is food, so we can reframe that which goes unconsumed as relevant to someone, important to consider, and worth fighting for.  

4-7-18 and 4-8-18 Food Waste Log: Over the weekend I maintained my momentum, tossing just a few scraps away: three egg shells, two avocado rinds/pits pepper tops, coffee grounds, flour dust and bread crumbs. During my shift at the coop, I sorted out a few pounds of some organic waste from the trash.  

I've been a little loose on this one, because so much of my food is sourced from the co-op, I've been saying I'm completing this one each day I have one meal that is just coop materials that were likely grown in the region. Maybe this coming week I'll be a bit more precise. 

Today I think I deserve the points because I started some basil, lavender, and cilantro germinating in the window sill, which will be in my nostrils and belly in a few months! 

4-6-18 food waste log: today I hd my first real food waste that was totally my fault. I had stuck a tuperware of leftover dinner in the fridge and there must have been no room on the shelf I keep left overs (in plan view) so i put it on the bottom shelf. Now it has been weeks and it's far far gone. It didn't help that the fridge light was out, so it was harder to see what was in the fridge and what was going bad. I just got back from the hardware store and picked up some soft LEDs, so we are saving energy on light and not heating in our fridge with an incandescent! I also tossed an avo rind + pit and a lime rind and rinsed out a few spoonfuls of quinoa from my salad bowl from lunch. 

4-4 Update:
on 4-4 I only threw away the following food: two-once packs of hot sauce from leftover take out in the fridge.  They were a roommates, but I was going to use them on my tacos so I think it should count as my waste. My tacos were an assemblage of leftovers--cooked rice that I enlivened by stirfrying it into eggs, the end of some blackbean salsa, the end of some queso fresco crumbles, arugula, and a side of salad that was very much on the verge. 

I was toying with the idea that personal food waste can be represented on a triangle with the following priorities at each vertex: convenience, freshness/taste, and flexibility/creativity. I haven't finalized this framework but I think there are a few competing prioirities when it comes to food waste and I'll be pondering it over the next few weeks.

Convenience because I often have to shlep food all over town in my backpack if I don't want it to be wasted, or I really need to plan ahead further than I otherwise would. Has anyone seen "Just Eat It"? Quite relevant to this point. 

Flexibility/creativity because I often add ingredients I wouldn't have otherwise so they don't go to waste (like the rice last night). My cooking practice each night is generally to look what will go bad in the next week and cook something with it on the fly, prioritizing anything that will go bad in the next two days. This works for me because my shopping practice is to buy ingredients that I like to eat in all sorts of meals, lot's of vegetables and bulk staples and specialty items I know I'll use quickly.

I'm still playing with the third corner, freshness/taste/risk(?), because to be honest, I definitely eat food that other people would toss because its subprime in order for it not to go to waste. If I'm being REALLY honest, I also eat food people have ALREADY tossed so that it doesn't go to waste. Most of the time though, it all tastes the same to me! Finally, I also need to fit cost in the mix of priorities. 

More to come!