Coastin Carl
🗑️ STOP FOOD WASTE Day ORIGIN & HISTORY
STOP FOOD WASTE Day is a time to reduce food waste globally. It really is an alarming problem once you learn about creating excess garbage that gets put into landfills. This in turn affects the environment and at the same time, wasted food is valuable! And what doesn’t get used can provide nutrition to people in need. STOP FOOD WASTE Day is recognized on the Last Wednesday in April; from farm to fork, we’ve got to reduce the amount of food thrown away!
❤ Those in NEED
If you’ve ever seen a hungry person or animal searching for food, then you know they have no problem searching through what many of us deem trash. This is quite sad and food waste has become a serious problem! One-third of the food that’s produced each year gets wasted. In general, many people don’t put enough thought into what we have. Whether it’s food or other items – we always want the best, newest and freshest things.
Corporations benefit when items or food are produced and consumers then buy. That’s how companies make a profit. There are many goods that are made today with recyclable materials. This helps with sustainability and it’s a good thing, but the frequency of occurrence isn’t enough. Garbage does continue to accumulate day after day. Billions of pounds of food waste are then generated year after year.
In reality, we should be thankful for the blessings of all that we are given. Since food waste is a huge problem that impacts lives and harms the planet, we should all do our part to prevent this problem.
THANK YOU Compass Group
In 2017, the Compass Group USA started an initiative to stop wasting food. They’re a global leader in the foodservice industry and provide for restaurants, cafes, hospitals, schools, prisons, and more. They work with consumers, corporate businesses, and influencers in 45 countries and use this day to bring awareness to this serious problem of food waste and encourage the industry to reuse and reduce.
Compass Group serves 9.8 million meals daily in North America alone. One of their goals is to educate chefs and companies to stop wasting food and track food as much as possible. They help put food that isn’t deemed in perfect condition for selling into food banks so that it can be distributed to people in need. Each year they provide 250,000 pounds of food to local food banks. They have come up with solutions within the food industry that will allow 795,000 hungry people to get the food they need to live.
One way to limit food waste is to cut down on wasting scraps and leftovers. Before the industrial revolution people appreciated what they had. Treating the things we have with respect is a good green global initiative that helps us to be sustainable. When we read Victorian novels about the Industrial Revolution we get some light shed on the struggles people had facing scarcity. People understood a Godly principle of being good stewards of what they had.
Since there is a projection that because there are so many people on this planet and everyone needs to be fed to live. We will continue to have a surplus of food and that means more food waste. Companies are aware of this green concern and have come up with innovative and novel ways to reduce food waste. Many companies in the food industry such as Moes, Starbucks, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut, and Chick-Fil-A are using friendly sustainable food industry practices.
IAAPA Goes Green
Part of food waste is to understand sustainability. IAAPA is a global conference for the Amusement Park & Attraction industry. Tripadvisor app helps the masses to know what to do with their free time. Many people spend holidays and off-time visiting attractions; an effort to educate and use sustainable products is at the forefront of one of IAAPA’s goals. This goal helps cut food waste which is huge during social outings.
Chefs and home cooks have come up with ways to utilize scraps just like Native Americans and the early pioneers did. Beneficial practices are being done to help Stop Food Waste.
Chefs can teach how to properly use all parts of fruits and vegetables and other types of food that get tossed into the trash as scraps. Some cookbooks can help you get the most out of the food that you eat. We often would think scraps are inedible and serve no purpose but we can revitalize parts of wasted food and do good things with it.
We are told to be thankful for having food to eat when others don’t. Yet we still waste food and many people go to bed hungry and are starving. When the food goes into the landfills it impacts our environment. On Stop Food Waste Day each person, business, and company can do their part to practice good habits in ending waste as a collaborative effort.
Be Part of The SOLUTION 😀
A closing thought. It’s sad to see that businesses still do an awful lot of food wasting. At the end of the day Cafes, restaurants, gas stations, coffee and donut shops, and so on toss food into the trash that wasn’t sold that day.
MealConnect is part of Save America which helps people to not starve. MealConnect works to get safe and quick food donations from food donations of local businesses. Grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, caterers, and more can use meal connect at no cost for donating surplus meals. Their initiatives to cut food waste have saved 3 billion pounds of food.
Commercial businesses have accumulated 66 billion pounds of food waste. Save America works to rescue and preserve food that is deemed high-quality food that otherwise goes to waste and gets put into food banks for distribution to people facing hunger. Save America works with manufacturers, retailers, and farmers to reduce food waste. Wasted food then gets saved and distributed to people in need.
On this day let’s continue to learn ways we can help cut food waste.
🍎 HOW to Celebrate & Observe STOP FOOD WASTE Day?
Not sure how to LOVE the day? We’ve got a few interesting ideas to consider that may help get you started.
Here are some activities that you can do on STOP FOOD WASTE Day!
💙 Take a break from FISHING
There’s an abundance of mackerel and herring. Fish like these are better to eat than overfished ones. Eat fish that’s been caught or farmed using sustainable practices, eco-labeled, and dolphin-safe.
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Households can generate potentially hazardous materials and should never be thrown into regular garbage. Hazardous materials can go into soil and waterways and damage natural resources which go into the soil and water used for producing foods we eat. These hazardous items are batteries, paints, mobile phones, medicine, chemicals, fertilizers, tires, ink cartridges, etc.
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Prepare meals using leftovers and veggies or fruits that are perfectly imperfect. Some online resources and cookbooks teach you how to prepare easy recipes by making use of leftovers and produce. Know before you go. Prepare a list of ingredients for recipes before going to the grocery store to help conserve food usage. Kroger grocery stores package ripe fruit and near out-of-date produce. You can buy it up before it goes out of date and use it immediately or save and freeze it for later use.
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Learn about Compass Group’s food-saving initiatives and see how you can educate yourself on being a food waste hero.
💙 RAISE Social Awareness
Use social media posts with the hashtags #StopFoodWasteDay, #StopFoodWaste, #FoodWaste, #ActivistHolidays, #MonthHolidays, #Holiday, #FindADayToLOVE, #iHEARTdays to support the importance of celebrating, promoting, and sharing with the world why you ❤️ STOP FOOD WASTE Day.
LEARN more about the importance of STOPPING FOOD WASTE
SOLVING THE FOOD WASTE PROBLEM
🧀 SIX Important Facts you never knew about STOP FOOD WASTE Day
- Grocery chains waste considerable quantities of food due to quality standards that over-emphasize appearance rather than the “ugly fruit”.
- Food losses during sloppy harvest and wasteful storage translate into shrinking small farm revenue and higher prices for shoppers.
- At present food wasted in the world could feed more than 300 million people in Africa, 200 million in Europe, and 300 million in Latin America.
- Fruits and vegetables have the highest rate of waste followed by roots and tubers.
- Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world (1.3 billion tons) ultimately gets lost or wasted each year.
- The average American family throws away around $1,500 worth of food each year.
The Imp💜rtance of STOP FOOD WASTE Day
Food wasting is bad; it damages the environment and impacts the millions of lives that are compromised or ended due to hunger. We can learn to store and use food appropriately. Make delicious recipes using very good recipe ideas. Appreciate what we have and don’t squander perfectly good food. Plus it’s a great way if you’re prudent to save money. Learn to prepare foods properly to be used straight away or for later use. We can all do our part to help the environmental hazards of food waste and get quality food to people that face hunger. Don’t take a laissez-faire approach on wasting food like tossing away leftovers, work on sustainability. Let’s all work together to tackle National Stop Food Waste Day head-on!
