Here is an awesome article from the Environmental Center all about Food Waste Awareness! Read the full article here or see below for some of the highlights including info about Grow & Give: HDFFA’s fresh food drive at farmers markets.
THE EPA’S FOOD: TOO GOOD TO WASTE CHALLENGE
Here is Deschutes County, 213 households have participated in the Environmental Center’s Rethink Food Waste Challenge. Folks have been learning all about small things they can do to make change in their habits to reduce the amount of waste in their homes. The challenge is finishing up on June 10, but all the information, resources and tips that were generated are available on their website. Are you interested in the challenge? You can implement your own! Try recruiting your neighbor, or neighborhood! Or maybe your book club or church.
FOOD WASTE AWARENESS IN CENTRAL OREGON
The High Desert Food and Farm Alliance has a program called Grow and Give dedicated to getting healthy food to the food banks: because everyone deserves access to fresh produce! You can donate $5 at the farmer’s market or extra produce from your own garden and they get it to folks who will eat it. Look for the grow and give booth at the NWX and Downtown Bend Farmer’s Markets!
HDFFA has a lot of incredible collaborative food-related programs that are worth learning about including a food recovery program in partnership with Central Oregon Community College (COCC) and professor Owen Murphy’s Sustainable Food and Nutrition course. HDFFA recently conducted three food waste audits in the dining hall at the campus. Students volunteered to help collect and weigh extra food from their peers plates in order to get some familiar and tangible data for in class poster presentations surrounding wasted food on their campus.
COCC has an active Food Recovery Program through their Sustainability Committee. In partnership with the COCC dining hall and Sodexo, they have diverted 775 pounds of food to Cascade Youth Services and the LOFT so far this year!
NeighborImpact’s Food Recovery Program operates year round to divert 1.3 million pounds of food annually from Deschutes County grocery stores, businesses, and residential donations. That’s 1.3 million pounds of food that is getting to people’s bellies instead of to Knott Landfill!
