Why We Should Care About Food Waste

According to the USDA, in the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40% of the food supply.

Our first impulse is the thought, we should be ashamed. But Brené Brown says shame is unproductive. We aren’t bad, but our less-than-mindful behaviors around food—buying or cooking more than we need and throwing the extra out—are. We’re just as guilty as anyone.

We should care about food waste because:

• Wasted food could help feed families in need

• Save money

• Conserve natural resources and

• Reduce greenhouse gasses generated from food rotting in landfills

Let’s turn guilt into mindful action!

Many of us have in-date home pantry items we purchased to make dinner…but we ordered pizza. Don’t let these items be your pantry equivalent of “aspiration jeans.” Give them to your neighborhood mini pantry and feed hungry people! (It’s at the top of the USDA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy.)

Mini pantry stewards might also approach local businesses about donating usable food that would otherwise go to waste. Even if businesses do not partner, initiating the conversation will market the mini pantry movement and make business owners more mindful of their own food wasteful behaviors.

See food waste diversion partner letter

Rural and Urban Settings

From Queens, NY, to a country road in Arkansas, more than four years later, we’ve seen mini pantries executed in every context. Just today, we added this Chicago, IL, mini to our movement map.

We aren’t local experts. And on site experience really does differ at a hyper local level. Two minis a mile apart will be for different folks—both those who shop and those who stock.

Wicker Park Lutheran LFP

So if you’re thinking about stewarding and looking for information about the project in your context, reach out to a steward in your hometown! Or if you’d be the first, reach out to us. With a little more info, we’ll connect you with someone stewarding in a similar setting.

Finally, it’s sorta true that urban supply matches urban demand and rural supply matches rural demand, but it’s also true that demand outpaces supply no matter where, and hungry folks everywhere will find and use mini pantries.

p.s.

The claim, “That’d never last here?” Go cheap and see.

Dollar Stores and Food Deserts

Dollar stores are problematic. Among their proposed impacts, some claim they push out “Main Street” mom and pops and “rip off poor folks.”

But in Weiner, AR, (our hometown; population 683) Dollar General is the only place you can get milk or bread without driving 29 miles. Cost in gas + time is probably greater than supermarket savings. (Maybe we’ll do the math next time we visit!) For some of our neighbors between paychecks, a dollar store may be all there is.

If a dollar store is the only game in town in your hometown and your hometown has a mini pantry, you can add impact to what you give by stocking up and giving items that are more expensive at dollar stores.

• spices, which may seem cheaper but are packaged at lower net weights

• chips and pretzels

• coffee products

• condiments

• baking soda/flour

• canned vegetables

While your neighbors between paychecks will appreciate pasta, rice, dried beans and oatmeal, dollar stores offer competitive prices on these items. Why not get them more bang for your buck?

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For more on what your community can do about dollar stores, take a look here.

List sourced here.