Did you know that as much as 40 percent of food produced in the U.S. ends up here,
at a solid waste facility?
Each one of us will throw away about 21 pounds of food this month alone.
That means students in your school are throwing away hundreds of pounds of food each day.
The impact of food waste on our community, our economy, and our environment is staggering.
We process 800 tons of solid waste here at this facility every single day.
We burn it, and we recover energy from it.
In Eastern Washington, 33 percent of everything that goes in the garbage could have been composted.
Half of that was food.
Wet food doesn't burn.
Even if it did go to a landfill instead, it's going to generate methane gas,
which is a very potent greenhouse gas emission.
There's no good way of dealing with garbage except not to make it.
I think if we all just took a moment and looked at what we waste,
you'd be surprised at what it adds up to.
And it adds up to a complete meal for someone.
One in five children in our region is food insecure, and what that means is,
they don't know where their next meal will come from.
That's a big number, one in five.
That could be someone sitting right next to you in class.
In a 2016 survey, 77 percent of Americans said that they feel guilty when throwing food away.
Who needs guilt? Just take what you’ll eat, and eat what you take.
It will ease your conscience and make an actual difference.
We want children to look at food and understand what a valuable resource that is.
Be aware of what you consume and then keep in the back of your mind a vision of
someone in need that could use that food that you're wasting.
If every student did their part to waste less, it would make a real impact.
At my school, I'm curbing food waste by recovering food that students would otherwise throw away
and donating it to students in need.
Since November, we've recovered 215 pounds of food,
which is equivalent to 168 meals fed to students in need.
Our number one mission is to feed people in need, and it we're rescuing food
that would be wasted anyway, that's just a bonus.
If there are ways that we can reduce, reuse, recycle, and make less waste to begin with,
then we don't have to worry about trying to deal with it here.
Want to make an actual impact on your school, home, community, and world?
Feed your body, not the trash can.