Spoonfuls, New England’s largest food recovery organization, has launched its Food Waste Challenge as part of its activities around Earth Month.
The organization seeks to help households tackle the 33% of food waste that happens at home. The initiative specifically targets best-by or sell-by dates and challenges consumers to look at monitoring and prioritizing at-risk items, flexible meal planning and shopping, rethinking date labels, freezing and strategic storage and eating leftovers.
Empowering Shoppers to Save
Liz Miller, senior community relations manager at Spoonfuls, says the Food Waste Challenge is a great opportunity for consumers to recognize their food waste habits, as nearly one-third of the food in the U.S. goes unsold or uneaten. While a lot of what happens at the grocery store level is consumer-driven, this is an opportunity for retailers to help consumers be more conscientious shoppers.
“It’s taking notice of the issue of wasted food and how it’s showing up in our daily lives, and then challenging ourselves to do better is the intent of the challenge,” she says. “And I think when we all go grocery shopping, that’s a perfect opportunity to practice that.”
Miller says there are also financial implications to wasted food, regardless of income, so she says she hopes this Food Waste Challenge is a motivation to make changes.
“The average household of four wastes around $3,000 on wasted food each year,” she says.
“What we understand from research is that households across the board are subject to this issue of wasted food and those households across the board are losing money if they’re wasting food,” she adds. “It’s exciting to be able to give folks sort of the tools to empower them to avoid that loss.”
Rethinking the ‘Perfect’ Produce
Miller says this could mean picking the misshapen pepper or another piece of produce that has some imperfections.
“It’s an opportunity for all of us, regardless of where we work or how we’re engaging in the food system, to really build a strong understanding of this very wide, widely reaching issue,” she says.
Miller says the Food Waste Challenge is an opportunity for consumers to be more thoughtful shoppers, knowing what they already have on hand and what needs to be used. It’s also a chance for consumers to be more intentional shoppers, buying only what can be consumed more timely.
“There was a study done a couple years ago that was looking at consumer food waste habits and interventions to reduce wasted food in the home, and making a grocery list and then sticking to that grocery list was one of the most effective ways that households were found to be reducing the amount of wasted food that they were generating,” she says.
Miller says there’s also some synergy with consumers’ bigger focus on food waste and apps, such as Too Good to Go or Flashfood, to help retailers eliminate surplus and excess product. While it’s easy to think that those apps compete for items that would be donated to food recovery organizations, she says this helps create broader consciousness around food waste.
“I think it opens the door for consumers to rethink their own standards, because when folks see something that’s imperfect or something that’s excess, they might not want it,” Miller says. “But then if it’s offered at like a discount and there’s kind of an exciting opportunity to grab something at a steal, more people are probably willing to do it.”
And this translates to consumers’ habits at home, where they may think differently about excess food.
“There’s some nice synergy with stores trying to be a little bit more sustainable and a little bit more efficient and using those kinds of apps and other software that’s helping them be more efficient,” she says. “With the consumers simultaneously becoming a little bit more tolerant of doing things differently in a retail environment.”
Aligning with Corporate Sustainability Goals
Miller says a major goal for the Food Waste Challenge is to curb the impacts of wasted food that ends up in landfills on greenhouse gas emissions, as nearly 3.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions are from wasted food.
“I know that that aligns with what a lot of retailers are thinking about as they’re thinking about their own sustainability goals and their corporate social responsibility goals,” she says.
Miller says the ultimate goal of the Food Waste Challenge is to promote more conscious consumption of food and build awareness, which is beneficial to all retailers.
“We welcome any retailer who wants to get on board to encourage their staff to take it and really just kind of dive into these issues with us, because it’s a great learning opportunity,” she says.
Miller says the Food Waste Challenge also helps show consumers realistically how much food they waste. She says she’s had many people tell her, “I don’t waste anything.”
“Then I challenge them to think about it a little bit more carefully and they start to realize, ‘I did throw away half a bunch of parsley just the other day’ or ‘Oh, yeah. Those carrots in my crisper got really floppy and I tossed them too.’ People start to think about it a little bit more critically.”
She points to Spoonfuls’ Wasted Food Inventory, which helps participants track food thrown away in a week and reflect on why the food was wasted to help determine small changes to waste less in the future.
“I think a lot of folks don’t realize it until they start paying attention to it, and then they’re shocked and ready to make a change,” she says.
Miller says if retailers have excess product that is safe to eat but needs to find a home, connect with a local food recovery organization like Spoonfuls to donate that excess produce.
“And that’s them taking the food waste challenge to heart and really making an impact,” she says.
