I’ve always loved traveling to colleges and conferences to speak on the impact and opportunity of wasted food. There’s something special about meeting new folks, bringing together interested people and groups, making eye contact on a key point, and, occasionally, hearing a chuckle on a joke. The pandemic squashed that. Like we’ve all done, though, I’ve adjusted and made friends with the remote presentation. While I hope to return to in-person talks soonish, I wanted to share a recent remote talk to give a sense of how that looks and sounds. Enjoy, and definitely reach out if I can be of servic ..read more

When 12 police officers are guarding a food-laden Dumpster, it’s worth reassessing the chain of events. Here goes: Portland store loses power due to snow and ice storm. Store throws away lots of food. Word spreads in city where 300,000 lack power. People come to grab food from dumpster. Store employees prevent dumpster diving and call police when people refuse to leave. Police guard trash, but eventually leave. People snag discarded food for themselves and the many free fridges around the city. First, what a sad saga, in an especially hard time for so many Portlanders and Americans. Second, th ..read more

And you thought September 29 was just National (U.S.) Coffee Day! The UN declared this day to in fact be International Day of Awareness for Food Loss and Waste. Who am I to argue? Instead, I joined the UN FAO’s Twitter chat. While I’d appreciate a shorter acronym next time to alleviate the Twitter character crunch (#IDAFLW), the Day was a nice chance to illuminate the solvable problem of wasting food. But, because Tweets are a tad fleeting, I wanted to share (immortalize?) the Twitter chat on this eternal blog. Keep in mind these are actual, unedited tweets. Question 1: Why should everyone ca ..read more

For years, I’ve been saying that we need to teach kids that food isn’t trash. That food isn’t just like any other commodity in our throw-away culture. That food is special. That food…matters! I’m thrilled to say that there’s now a great resource to teach that message. This past year, I’ve helped create an amazing (and free!) toolkit to do just that–the Food Matters Action Kit! The fun, fact-filled resource is brimming with diverse activities, lessons, and games to help teachers and youth leaders bring the topic of wasted food to life. Food Matters covers food waste prevention, redistribution ..read more