Last weekend I was invited to be a speaker at the TEDxYouth@Austin event to talk about Food Waste prevention and recovery. I was so excited, and honored to be included in their incredible lineup of speakers and performers, and pleased to share this message with a young audience.

I walked out on the stage, at the Westlake High School Auditorium,  with a box of pizza in my hands and told them "What I'm about to say to you may change the way you see food, for the rest of your life." Actually, here is the text (and visual cues) of my ~7 minute speech, as planned, not precisely as delivered. (When the video is available I'll post it… HERE is the Trashing Pizza video on YouTube!).

 

While most of us enjoy eating, I know I do, very few of us contemplate or truly appreciate the tremendous resources of energy, water, labor and other inputs that go into making our meals possible. 

 

Let's look at pizza  (open the box of pizza sitting on the table and angle it forward a bit.)

It’s got flour, oil, tomato sauce, veggies and spices. Every one of the ingredients went through a long and involved journey of being planted, grown, harvested, processed and transported several times before being baked into a pizza.

 

So after all those resources went into making it, wouldn't it be a shame for it not to get eaten?

 

If I was part of an average American household I would throw away a quarter of this pizza. (lift up ¼ of pizza and drop it in the trash can)

 

That's right, 25% of what enters American homes gets wasted. 

The average US household spends more than $133 dollars a month, or $1600 per year, on food that no one eats.

 

But it's even worse than that – If this whole pizza represented all the food in America (toss another slice ) this would be more accurate ( gesturing to the space). We waste 40% of our food from farm to table.

If you gathered it together, it would be enough food to fill the Rosebowl stadium every day!

And would you believe that  globally up to 50% of edible food is wasted. (drop one more piece in the trash)

 

This is a massive expense for our planet, with no return.

 

Environmentalists focus lots of attention on conserving energy and water but little attention on food waste which consumes a lot of both. 4% of total US oil consumption and 25% of all fresh water, a QUARTER of what we could drink used in the US goes to grow food that NO ONE EATS!

 

Then there is the problem of disposal. 

When we talk about throwing things away…(point to trash can and gesture to screen) (trigger the Google Earth zoom out from WHS to view of earth from space)  … where is away? There is no away. 

We live on a rock, floating through space, and everything we extract, create or dispose of is ours to deal with. 

 

So really, where does food go when you throw it away? (trigger Google Earth zoom in from space to landfill)

Currently, the vast majority of food waste goes to landfills, which is pretty much the worse place it could go. It’s a dead end for all those nutrients.

And when food goes into a landfill it doesn't turn into soil…It breaks down and creates methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.  

And now that we recycle so much paper, plastic and metal, the single largest stream of material entering our landfills is food! 

 

We spend 750 million dollars a year disposing of food. What if we spent that same money preventing waste and recovering food for higher and better uses?

 

So what would be better?

First and foremost, preventing waste is the very best strategy, and I’ll share some ideas on that in a minute.

 

When there is surplus food the best option is to feed people. If it’s not suitable for human consumption some can be used to  feed animals, or it can be remanufactured into compost, biofuel or used for other industrial uses.

 

Fear of law suits is what holds back many from donating food to people. But the fact is that since 1996, the federal Emerson Good Samaritan Food Act has encouraged donations and protected all food businesses that donate food in good faith.

 

And people really need it – 50 million people, or 1 out of 6 Americans don't know where their next meal is coming from. 17 million of those food insecure in the US are children – that's as many kids as are enrolled in every US Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades. 

 

Now I’m not saying that all those people could be directly served by redirecting food waste, but a lot of them could. And maybe we shouldn’t be taxing the earth so much for stuff that no one is benefitting from and focus our resources more productively.

 

There are losses of food all along the chain at the farm, in packaging, in transportation, and in retail, but the largest chunk is at the consumer level so let me share some things you can do:

          1. Avoid sending food from your HOME to the landfill:

     By the way, leftovers are awesome – it's food that was cooked by professionals, is ready to eat, and it’s already paid for. 

  

 

So clearly, Food Waste is a big problem. But the size of the problem also indicates the size of the opportunity. We are at an exciting time in history when we are re-defining what is acceptable when it comes to food waste – locally, nationally and globally.

 

In short, we need to stop paying to put food in landfills where it is a negative and instead redirect that food to positive ends – feeding people and animals, as well as generating biofuel and healthy soil.

 

So every time you eat, or plan an event with food, I hope you’ll take actions to make sure none of it gets wasted.

 

By the way, (pull bag with plate out of trash with pizza ) you didn't really think I would let this perfectly good pizza go to waste, did you?