On May 1, 2022, after wrapping up four weeks of activities and engagement for Food Waste Reduction Month, Food Waste Solutions WNC hosted its first-ever Taste It, Don’t Waste It: Asheville Chefs Challenge event at Wicked Weed’s production facility and taproom in Candler. And it was a blast!  Four talented, popular, waste-conscious Asheville chefs (John Rice of Wicked Weed’s downtown brewpub, Clarence Robinson of Cooking with Comedy, Eric Morris of Cultura, and Steven Goff of Tastee Diner) created fantastic dishes from food scraps that many home cooks might just throw away.  The larg ..read more

By Marc Rudow UNC Asheville Dining Services, a partnership between Chartwells Higher Education and University of North Carolina Asheville, works hard to keep food waste to a minimum. The team at UNC Asheville Dining uses every tool available to feed students, and at the same time keeps about 11,000 pounds of food a month out of the trash.  The efforts to divert food waste are led by Chantal Fortin, the Sustainability and Marketing Manager for dining. Chartwells has made an enormous commitment to recycling and composting at the national lev ..read more

Thanksgiving is all about sharing and gratitude, yet on this holiday — probably the most food-focused day in the United States — about 200 million pounds of turkey meat alone is thrown in the garbage.  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the greenhouse gas emissions from the wasted turkey alone is equal to what would be produced if every resident of Jacksonville, Florida drove their own car all the way across the U.S. to San Francisco. That’s the equivalent of 25.6 billion grams of protein, which is enough to meet the recommended daily protein intake for more than 500 mill ..read more

Originally posted at the City of Asheville’s website by Polly McDaniel Did you know that in the US nearly 40% of food is wasted, clogging our landfills and costing us over $408 billion annually?! The City of Asheville is working hard to think of solutions to reduce our waste and save our food. The City of Asheville’s Office of Sustainability, in partnership with Sanitation and Buncombe County, recently audited waste at three Asheville Parks & Recreation facilities while they were hosting Asheville City Schools’ learning PODS. This data is being used to learn more about how much and w ..read more

Eliminating food waste translates to tasty meals for the lucky animals on Liz Pence’s Western North Carolina farm. As operations manager at local catering company Smash Events, Liz uses the food scraps generated by her company as the main food source for her two pigs, Gilbert and Collards, and also gives some to her chickens. (The leftovers looked so good when I was in their kitchen that I almost reached in and grabbed a snack for myself!)  When Liz brings event leftovers and kitchen scraps home, her children help sort the compostable cups and other items from the edibles, then she portio ..read more

Going, going, gone — but not wasted! Small, local grocer West Village Market is big on eliminating food waste Entering the West Village Market, a small grocery store in West Asheville, one is immediately struck with how clean, beautiful, and efficiently organized it is. Everything looks tidy and immaculate. And most notably, this market puts hardly anything into the trash.  How do they do it? Rosanne Kiely, who co-owns West Village Market with Ron Ainspan, gives us the scoop: Freezing Almost every food product can have its life extended by freezing. Both farmers and the grocery store use ..read more

When Asheville-born brewery Wicked Weed was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev back in 2017, many craft beer fans didn’t know what to expect. Would the flavor and soul of Wicked Weed’s craft be lost? Five years on, we can happily say the flavor and soul are safe. And although they’ve scaled up production, sales, and distribution, they’ve also scaled up sustainability efforts. Through employee engagement and both community and internal initiatives, Wicked Weed is setting a high bar: from increasing energy and water efficiency to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They are paying attention to the ..read more

Have you ever forgotten about the hidden carton of berries in the back of your refrigerator until it’s too late? Opted for take-out instead of using those veggies? Realized one bite too late that the box of crackers you just opened expired in….2019? Yikes.  We’ve all been there, and the statistics prove it. In a recent study, the NRDC found 38% of all trash generated by households in the Asheville area is actually food waste. That’s almost half!  If only there was some way to save money, reduce your garbage each week and do your part to help the environment and your community… Well ..read more

2022 Food Waste Challenge This year Buncombe County joins Asheville in recognizing April as Food Waste Reduction Month! Why a whole month dedicated to food waste education, you ask? Almost half of food produced in the United States is wasted! Here in Buncombe County, an estimated 57,500 tons of food is wasted annually. Most of the waste is buried in the ground as landfill. Food that is thrown away also wastes all of the land, water, and energy that it takes to grow, store, and transport it. We all need healthy food to live and grow, so we’re investigating how to waste less food and live m ..read more

In 2021, the word “meeting” has become synonymous with online platforms and chatting with people in little boxes on a computer screen. But on Aug. 19, WNC Food Waste Solutions decided to take its Quarterly Meeting outdoors as a distanced, in-person event in the covered, open-air venue at Blue Ghost Brewing Co. in Fletcher. The gathering was originally scheduled to kick off with business and Working Group updates, but when heavy late-afternoon traffic held up the arrival time for many attendees, the first hour organically shifted to a casual meet-and-greet. Some guests grabbed a cold beverage f ..read more