Month: March 2017

Week 1:

I plan on kicking off Earth month by focusing on my own food waste and the food waste of those close to me. In order to work on the problem whole heartedly, I need to make sure that I am not being a hypocrite.
Week 2:

I plan to design posters on food waste in America. Most of the difficulty will come from finding facts that put the problem in perspective for college students. I will use trusted sites that provide accurate information on the subjects.

Week 3:

I plan to hang up the previously designed posters on all floors of Morrill Tower. The most difficult aspect this week will be finding out who I need to ask in order to be able to hang up the posters. The posters will be hung by the elevators on each floor so that people can look at them when they are waiting for the elevator.

Week 4:

I plan to find a nonprofit to volunteer for. The challenge of this will be transportation to the volunteer location and time. Another challenge with this will be choosing which nonprofit in Columbus to volunteer for.

Both of the in-class speakers made me realize just how important volunteers are to the non-profits world. Without the unpaid manpower of volunteers, the non-profits would not be able to do the work they do. Also, the speakers made me realize that sometimes you just have to go and ask non-profits if there are any ways to help them or to work for them. Moving forward, I need to consider how I am going to get people to care enough about food waste to volunteer their time and effort to decreasing it.  My biggest takeaway from the class was that if there are people who care about your issue than it is easier to get people involved. This means that I will have to find a way get people to understand the complex issue of food waste and to get those people to care enough to do something about it.  Also, I learned that separate issues can impact your issue even if they are not commonly thought of as connected. That is why non-profits and companies need to stick together and help each other to improve the overall quality of the community and the world.

I would like to educate people on the facts behind food waste in America and how food can be used to feed America instead of being wasted. I also would like to educate people on what each label on food really means. For example, best by date does not mean that once it passes that date it is spoiled. I also want to make people aware that there are nonprofits that you can volunteer with in order to help decrease food waste.

Part 1

Nonprofits are currently working to collect food that would go to waste and then give that food to people who would go hungry without it. These nonprofits work both on the college level and the local level. The organizations work to tackle both the problem of food waste and of hunger. One of the popular nonprofits is a college based program that has a chapter that opened here in November 2016. The Ohio State chapter of Food Recovery Network is small right now. Students could contact the contact person for their local chapter. The chapter for Ohio State works with another nonprofit, the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, to tackle the hunger side of the problem. This is the only nonprofit locally that tackles the issue of food waste in Columbus.

The most important thing to consider when looking at food waste through the nonprofit lens is to remember that fixing the problem of food waste cannot be accomplished without help from other nonprofits that work on fixing the problem of hunger.

The nonprofits that are tackling food waste are doing work on three levels of the model. On the personally responsible citizen level, the nonprofits are donating the food that is about to expire to other nonprofits that redistribute the food to the hungry. On the participatory citizen level, the nonprofits offer a place that people and companies can donate their about to expire food. On the social-justice citizen level, the nonprofits offer a fix to the food waste problem by allowing people to have a place to give their food to instead of just throwing it out. The food that people throw out accounts for a good amount of the food waste that America produces. Nonprofits have not been able to tackle the food waste that is produced from people not finishing their meals at restaurants.

Part 2

I watched the TEDx Talk video, “A recipe for cutting food waste” by Peter Lehner. Peter used to climb mountains and was always conscious of using the last drop of every food item that he came in contact with. This changed when he stopped climbing mountains. Peter shared that 40 percent of food grown in America is not eaten. More energy efficient technology came about because of ordinary people pushing the government to design better programs to encourage businesses to create better products. This can be translated in how to solve the food waste crisis. Peter suggests that food produced that is not up to the visual standards of the customer be sold at discount prices to organizations that use it to create products. Another solution is to standardize the labeling on the food packaging. Companies can also donate their unused food to nonprofits instead of wasting it. Another way to handle food waste is to composite it instead of sending it to landfills. Peter also shared some tips on how consumers can cut down on their individual food waste. Peter also urged that food waste should be measured so that it can be tracked and decreased over time. Overall, Peter shared a lot of good tips on tackling the complex issue that is food waste.