P&P October 2015

Tackling food waste from coast to coast

By Lisa Dupree

U

niversity of Maryland, College Park (UMD) alumni Ben Simon, Mia Zavalij, and Cam

Pascual noticed a problematic trend as undergrad- uates: uneaten food from campus dining halls was thrown away, every night. At the flagship institution, sitting just four miles outside of Washington, D.C., with an enrollment of more than , students, Zavalij estimated this daily turnover, cumulatively, to be between , – , pounds a year. “It was just something that does not feel right, does not look right—to have a handful of delicious good food, ready to go, ready to eat and then just have that just tossed into a trashcan,” Simon said recalling the nightly discards. But the trend wasn’t unique to the campus. The results of a study by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology—per the request of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—estimated that “roughly one- third of food produced for human consumption

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October 2015 Policy&Practice