April 7th through the 13th is National Food Waste Prevention week, and SWACO is taking the opportunity to introduce the new Fresh Takes initiative of its Save More Than Food campaign, which aims to help residents and restaurants alike reduce the amount of wasted food they鈥檙e throwing away.
Nearly a million pounds of wasted food makes its way to the Franklin County landfill every single day, even as some local residents don鈥檛 know where their next meal may come from.听 Even families with plenty to eat may be spending as much as $2,000 per year on food that goes to waste.听 The Fresh Takes website offers articles, recipes, videos, and tips to help residents reduce the amount of food they waste.听 Topics include tips on using what you have on-hand, proper freezing and storage techniques to make leftovers last, and how to make sense of best-by and use-by dates.听 The site also includes recipes for putting over-ripe fruits and veggies to use instead of throwing them away, making the most of stale bread, and highlighting ways to substitute ingredients you already have on-hand rather than buying more.
鈥淥ur food waste team continues to provide practical ways for residents and businesses to reduce food waste in our landfill and save money,鈥� said SWACO Executive Director, Joe Lombardi.听 鈥淲asting food is expensive and has a larger economic impact when you consider the cost of the resources that went into growing, processing, and transporting the food.鈥�
In addition to the Fresh Takes initiative aimed at residents, SWACO is also targeting businesses and communities in Franklin County. 聽The new Food Waste Champion program works with businesses to reduce food waste through technical assistance across prevention, donation, and composting activities. 聽Theprogram also offers indoor organic collection containers to businesses that want to divert food waste towards composting and a reimbursement for the first six months of organics hauling service. SWACO is also launching a new Food Waste Drop Off Expansion Program to help communities start or expand their existing food waste drop-off locations. Currently, there are more than 30 free food waste drop-off sites throughout Franklin County where residents can bring household organics for composting. 聽The new program is designed to increase that number and involve more communities.
鈥淢ost of what comes to the landfill every day could have been recycled or composted and, believe it or not, food is the largest single category of that waste,鈥� said Lombardi.听 鈥淔resh Takes provides resources as well as information about composting and even donating food to those in need.听 The last thing we want is for good, nutritious food to come to the landfill when it could be used to nourish Franklin County families.鈥�