On Thanksgiving and year-round, JoCo city tries to reduce waste. Why don’t we all do it?
Many of our childhoods were regaled with idyllic portraits of the first Thanksgiving. How the picturesque scene in our minds would have been ravaged at the thought that the participants might have thrown a third or more of the food away when it was over.
It certainly tramples on the spirit of gratitude that is Thanksgiving.
Yet, might such needless waste form a more accurate picture of the last Thanksgiving in many households?
If so, it could be considered just another day: According to the Food and Drug Administration, 31% of food is wasted at the retail and consumer levels, and up to 40% of the food supply overall.
Johnson County is taking laudable, and frankly overdue, steps to reduce or at least reuse that waste. As should we all.
Starting in February, Prairie Village will embark on a measured and modestly priced $18,000 six-month curbside composting experiment. Some 200 homes will be able to put their food waste out in provided bins and have it taken to a composting facility where it will be processed into nutrient-dense soil.
If only it could become a habit and a convenient process supported by enthusiastic users. Composting can not only help plants thrive, but also can slow the growth of landfills: Johnson County Commissioner Becky Fast notes a 2016 study that showed food waste accounts for nearly a quarter of the county’s landfill.
A pilot curbside composting program — in just one of Johnson County’s cities — isn’t sticking our toe into composting. It’s sticking the edge of our toenail in.
That’s why so much is riding on Prairie Village’s pilot program, because so much more needs to be done.
Indeed, the county’s five-year solid waste management plan, updated only last July, notes that,
“While almost all yard waste generated in Johnson County has been diverted from the (municipal solid waste) landfill, no infrastructure is yet permitted to support a large-scale food waste composting program.”
In addition, waste from commercial haulers is diverted from the landfill largely by the county’s voluntary “green business program,” which provides interested businesses with consulting and a nominal amount of monetary support for recycling or composting infrastructure.
The good news is that businesses, schools and households are increasingly getting on board with the compost movement. In 2017, Fast points out, the Shawnee Mission School District sent more than 600,000 pounds of discarded food and paper for composting — some of it to school gardens.
Diverting more edible food, society’s leftovers, to anti-hunger organizations would also help, Fast argues in a column in the Shawnee Mission Post. Even though Johnson County is ranked as the wealthiest in Kansas by financial news and opinion site 24/7 Wall St., Fast says there are 60,000 in the county without “reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food” — the working definition of “food-insecure.”
Whatever the exact number, any amount of hunger in our midst should be cause for more food efficiency, which Fast contends should include better meal planning from the outset. For Thanksgiving especially, but for every day, she suggests consulting Savethefood.com for tips on how to preserve and use up more of your food, and even how to estimate how much to buy for the crowd you’re feeding. Johnson County officials think so much of Savethefood.com that they’re teaming up with it to spread the word about these vital issues.
Those at the first Thanksgiving of legend certainly didn’t have the refrigeration, freezing and storing capacities we have. But it’s likely they still would’ve been more sparing with the bounty provided them.
We have far less excuse than they did to waste food. And more tools to avoid it.