How the industry is approaching the food waste problem

虽然“干净的盘子俱乐部”在许多美国家庭中失去了普及，但这种短语背后的概念仍然很容易掌握：浪费你拥有的食物是错误的。

And while the number of people in the world that do not get enough to eat has fallen since 1990, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations still estimates that there are still 842 million people hungry today.

然而，随着这些统计数据，食物垃圾的范围已经增长如此广泛，普遍普遍地蔑视信念。英格兰的机械工程师机构估计，现在浪费了地球上产品的所有食物中的一半。美国农业部表示，在美国，每年约有1310亿英镑的食物 - 从未吃过售出的约31％。

该问题捕获了在行业，学术界和消费者中的许多人的注意。对这个问题的一些有趣和实际的解决方案正在出现。以下是我们在行业中最好的创新选择，以减少食物垃圾。

Use it

ANaerobic Digestion是可以将生物降解的物品如食物转化为能量的过程。简单地说，它是一种让微生物在没有氧气的环境中与食物的方式。最终产生可用于运行发动机的甲烷和二氧化碳的沼气。

超市连锁SAINSBURY已决定使用商店中的食物废物来为建筑物自身供电。The first such project is underway now in the town of Cannock。Sainsbury's has considerable experience with anaerobic.digestion. The company has long sent the food it cannot sell or give away to charity to a processor for conversion into biogas.

Here in the states, produce growers have jumped on to the biogas bandwagon as well. A gas-processor in Florida called Harvest Powercounts佛罗里达州中央新鲜点和泰勒农场作为顾客。

卖掉它

One reason there is so much wasted food in the modern world is that we've grown accustomed to seeing perfection. As growers have mastered the art of producing beautiful pieces of fruit and vegetables, consumers have come to expect that every piece of produce be a masterpiece.

But what about ugly food? The French retailerIntermarché haslaunched an extensive marketing campaign旨在让消费者欣赏小于-perfect fruits and veggies. The ugly stuff gets its own section of the store, is sold at a 30% discount, and is featured in ads that remind consumers that the health benefits of produce are present, even in ugly food.

Compost it

如果你曾经认识园丁，那么你知道这些人在垃圾中有多感兴趣。当你在垃圾桶里扔掉食物而不是堆肥箱时，没有什么能够让他们变得更加不堪。

因此，如果你问园丁如何了解世界的食物废物问题，他会告诉你更多，更好，更好，堆肥箱。这正是一些人决定做的事情。

WISErg Corp., created by a group of Microsoft engineers, has invented a high-tech compost bin dubbed The Harvester that converts wasted food into fertilizer with little effort. The bins look sort of like bank safes—big metal boxes with a combination lock. WISErg wants retailers and foodservice operators to put them outside their places of business.

Food waste goes into the bin, the nutrients are extracted using WISErg's proprietary systems, and a经济学家被称为“花式肥料”的液体是创造的。

Leave it

One of the simpler, yet remarkably effective, methods to reduce food waste is to reduce the amount of food people take with them, particularly young people.

Enter the "trayless" movement. Back in 2007, a man namedStuart Leckie是缅因州圣约瑟夫学院用餐的总经理。Leckie担心学生将在餐厅中堆放到他们的托盘中的纯粹的食物担心......那些学生稍后会丢弃的比例非常高。

Leckie意识到，通过让学生携带食物更难，他们浪费它会更难。所以他开始淘汰托盘的使用。

Leckie的想法有在全国各地的学校捕获了食品服务提供商。

捐赠它

Of course not every college kid over-fills his tray in the first place. Some students are part of the solution, not the problem. And many of those problem solvers are members of The Food Recovery Network.

Frn是一个全国非营利组织，来自近50所学院和大学的成员。学生会员从餐厅收集不需要的食物，并将其捐赠给有需要的人。The Food Recovery Network自2011年9月以来，收集并分发了超过40万磅的食物。

在学术界大厅外，全国各地也有可比的非营利组织。在更熟知的是City Harvest, which works with 2,300 restaurants, retailers, food processors and foodservice operators in New York City, and the food banks of theFeeding America network。