- It smells kind of gross but,
we're saving the planet so that's the priority.
(soft music)
- 40% of food goes uneaten by Americans every year.
Americans are throwing away 165 billion dollars
in food every year.
Meanwhile 42 million Americans,
13 million of which are children, don't have access
to enough food to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
I'm Merle, I'm a Tasty producer here in New York.
And hearing all of those facts,
is terrifying.
So what are we gonna do about it?
Here in New York we have eight active Tasty producers
that are regularly filming and testing recipes.
So we go through a lot of food
and that means a lot of food scraps end up in the trash.
So for the past week I collected all of the food waste
we produced and I weighed it.
61 pounds?
That number is so scary because if you multiply that by four
that's 244 pounds a month
and if you multiply that by 12,
that's 2,928 pounds a year.
That's a lot of food waste.
I can't help but think there's more we could do about it.
I am here today because I'm challenging
our Tasty producers to produce
zero food waste for seven days.
Both in work and at home.
- Oh man,
- That sounds difficult.
Like what does it entail though?
- While you're at work and while you're at home
instead of throwing your scraps away
you're gonna be composting everything.
And also like just be more mindful about how much food
you're ordering, how much food you're using for shoots.
So will you pledge to take this challenge
with your signature?
- Alright, fine, yes.
- Easy, lets do it.
No like blood pledge?
- That's later.
I can't do that on camera.
- It's gonna be challenging
but I think it'll be really rewarding.
- It's a good challenge.
- This positivity is honestly gonna make me so emotional.
After spending the morning hunting everyone down,
I finally got all of them to sign away their rights
to waste any food for the next week.
It would be impossible to cook the amount of food
that we do and come out of it with zero food byproducts.
So I encourage producers first and foremost
to limit their intake of food to only what they need.
And to give away any extra food to those in need
or those even around the office.
Composting was only supposed to be used as a last resort.
- So I've tasked myself with eating this apple
with as little waste as possible.
I'm gonna compost it and I feel so much better
about myself it's crazy.
- So I have this extra batch of sweet potato hummus,
instead of throwing it out I'm going to save it
and maybe eat it as a snack tomorrow.
- I decided the most fool proof way to ensure
we would consistently compost in the Tasty kitchen
was to organize a compost program.
So I decided to take it upon myself
to try and make that happen.
I called at least nine different companies,
researched all afternoon and talked about compost
for a couple of hours until I finally found
one woman who seemed like she could help.
- [Meredith] This is Meredith.
- Hi Meredith, my name is Merle, I'm interested
in bringing composting to my company that I work at.
- [Meredith] Awesome, that's great to hear Merle.
- We talked for 30 minutes about how to make this happen,
toward the end I was feeling pretty hopeful.
(squeals)
I think it's gonna happen, oh my god I'm so excited.
Okay, so I'm waiting to talk to facilities manager today
about bringing composting into the office.
Very nervous, but after my phone call yesterday
with Meredith I'm feeling pretty good.
But I don't know what she's gonna say so,
wish me luck.
(exhales)
I just talked to facilities, we're gonna be able to get
a compost situation rolling out for the Tasty kitchen
which is great news, I don't know how this
is happening right now but we're making it work people,
we're gonna be composting, it's gonna be great.
We're gonna officially have composting in the Tasty kitchen.
- What?
- [Merle] Forever.
- Are you serious?
This makes it so much easier,
this is all I've ever wanted this entire time.
'cause if you give people the ability
and make it easy for them, they'll do it,
it's just when it's an inconvenience.
- [Merle] I was so happy to see that people were excited
at the idea of having a compost system in the kitchen.
So the next step was to have Meredith come in
and talk compost with us.
- Why is composting important?
Every one eats, so everyone generates food waste,
food scraps go to a landfill, they get suffocated
and in that environment which we refer to
as an anaerobic environment, one without oxygen,
methane is a byproduct, methane is a greenhouse gas.
It's more potent than carbon dioxide in terms
of it's warming potential and it's a pretty easy solution.
Removing food scraps from our waste stream
to avoid methane production and to mitigate further
you know green house gas emissions and climate change
is very important and if we all can play a part
in that process by putting our food scraps
in a separate bin in our houses,
why wouldn't we?
- [Merle] Meredith talked to our producers
to make sure they knew how to properly compost
before she handed over our shiny new bin.
- [Meredith] Thanks for you time guys.
(audience applause)
- I use Merle's compost bin, it really wasn't hard
or scary and I don't know why I was so scared.
There's no reason not to be doing it.
- I just got to say I feel like the world
is a little bit of better place now.
I'm not taking all the credit,
but I'm taking a little piece of the credit.
- Meredith said that actually one of the best ways
to reduce food waste is to eat it.
So that's what we're gonna go do
is eat some Tasty leftovers.
- That's what I been doing.
- Yeah. - Yes.
- I forgot to compost.
Ew, this is my walk of shame.
- So heres a lot of the stuff that we've gone through,
freezing it also helps to keep the odors at bay
when I'm opening and adding to it.
Also look at how crazy this is,
this is a day and a half worth of compost.
Here we have glorious Union Square Farmer's Market,
look what I found, all this compost.
- I just cleaned out my refrigerator
and I filled up one Tupperware container.
I'm gonna put it into a paper bag and walk it up
to the farmers market.
- I have some food waste that I grated the other day.
I am attempting to put them in the composting bin
but I think that maybe I can make something out of them.
I actually made quite a pretty tasty salad.
Now I'm gonna see who I can share it with.
- [Rachel] Since they have composting all
of these perfectly good leftovers, we're gonna give them
away to people at the office.
- Okay, I love my team, love them to death
but I'm not a fool, I'm gonna check the trash bins
to make sure that nothing goes undetected.
What the hell?
Wait, it's a full orange.
I knew there would be some slip ups along the way
which is totally fine, and to be expected
but they were not going to elude the trash lady.
Not on my watch.
Just like anything else, composting needs to become
a habit and soon enough it'll be second nature.
So it's time to weigh any trash that people
accidentally accumulated
that would be going to landfill.
As a whole, the Tasty kitchen looks sparkling clean,
everyone's done a fantastic job of trying to keep
and use our produce to it's fullest potential.
And if not just to give it away.
We're gonna compare this number with our number
from last week which was 61 pounds.
The verdict is in and we got three and a half pounds.
From 61 pounds to three and a half pounds is amazing.
I'm so happy for everyone, I'm really proud of us.
- All of the food that goes to waste in the Tasty kitchen
I'm just shocked that we weren't doing this before.
- It's really nice to know that anything
that doesn't get eaten or that people leave behind,
that ordinarily I would just throw away,
can be repurposed in some fashion.
- [Merle] Kermit the frog once said,
it's not easy being green.
But I'm here to tell you, oh yes it is.