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One German supermarket has found a solution for expired (but still edible) food: giving it away for free to customers. A typical German supermarket dumps food waste that's expired - but in many cases is still edible - in containers outside of its premises. But as of this year, an Edeka in Ösnabrück, Lower Saxony, has set up a special station for food that has surpassed its official expiration date or is considered too old to still sit on shelves. Any customer can stop by to pick up a variety of products, from fruits and veggies to packaged goods. "The...

Researchers in Japan have created a concrete replacement out of food scraps — and the new compound can be both edible and sweet-smelling... His earlier research resulted in a technique for combining recycled concrete powder and wood waste to form an improved material through heat pressing. That sparked interest in using other waste products. “A similar approach can be applied to not only wood, but also to vegetables and fruit, and that is what we did,” he said... “It is said that one-third of food is wasted in the whole world.”

The beef restaurant in the city of Changsha placed two large scales at its entrance this week. It then asked diners to enter their measurements into an app that would then suggest menu items accordingly. Signs reading "be thrifty and diligent, promote empty plates" and "operation empty plate" were pinned up. ... implementing a system where groups have to order one dish fewer than the number of diners.Homer Simpson

Friday is the deadline for Austin food-permitted businesses to submit a plan for what they will do with scraps and other organic or compostable material. "We want to divert 90 percent of everything going to the landfill by 2040," said Tom Gleason with Austin Resource Recovery... Thirty to 40 percent of trash is organic material. Finding other ways to dispose of it is not only good for the environment, but supports the economy and creates new jobs, according to Gleason. Austin Resource Recovery will work with businesses to come up with a creative, cost-effective plan. However, if food-permitted businesses don't...

WASHINGTON -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said America needs to stop wasting food, even if that means teaching people to cut back on the amount of food on their plates. Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, the former Iowa governor said long-term food insecurity "is a challenge, because we're going to have to increase food production -- I've seen anywhere from 50 to 70 percent in the next 35 years -- to meet a growing world population." "But the first step, and the one way the USDA can provide help and assistance to meet this need, is to...

The Environmental Protection Agency is spending $25,000 to teach churchgoers in Connecticut about food waste.The agency announced over $1.7 million awarded through its Healthy Communities Grant Program on Thursday, including $50,000 for its “Food Too Good to Waste” initiative that seeks to curb climate change by teaching adults how to write a grocery list.Sustainable America, a nonprofit group that wants people to turn off their engines instead of idling and buy hybrid cars, was given $25,000 to bring the program to churches.“This initiative will recruit households from faith-based congregations in the Greater Bridgeport and Stamford areas to implement a Food...

SEATTLE — The nation’s first citywide composting program based largely on shame began here in January. City sanitation workers who find garbage cans filled with aging lettuce, leftover pizza or even the box it came in are slapping on bright red tags to inform the offending household (and, presumably, the whole neighborhood) that the city’s new composting law has been violated. San Francisco may have been the first city to make its citizens compost food, but Seattle is the first to punish people with a fine if they don’t. In a country that loses about 31 percent of its food...

I call them the Busybody Brigade (The BB for short). The Left’s army of activists who look for problems that don’t actually exist, and solve them with restrictions that don’t actually work. Their motto: “There should be a law….” They are meddlesome. They are relentless. And they are on a quest to influence almost every decision you make, from sunrise to sunset. It’s all in an attempt to “better the collective” and control your life. Let them, help you. After all, it takes a village. The BB is alive and well in Seattle, where a new ordinance on the books...

In Seattle, wasting food will now earn you a scarlet letter — well, a scarlet tag, to be more accurate. The bright red tag, posted on a garbage bin, tells everyone who sees it that you've violated a new city law that makes it illegal to put food into trash cans. "I'm sure neighbors are going to see these on their other neighbors' cans," says Rodney Watkins, a lead driver for Recology CleanScapes, a waste contractor for the city. He's on the front lines of enforcing these rules. Seattle is the first city in the nation to fine homeowners for...

Sure, the incentive to compost is the putative reason for this regulation, but exactly how is it enforced? In order for city officials and trash collectors to know you have committed the civic sin of disposing of leftover food in your trashcan, they have to examine the contents of your trashcan. Let’s hope the citizens of Seattle and trash collectors can come to some kind of silent truce over this. Do they collectors really want to examine every load they dump into the truck for transgressions? (Lord help us, the city probably offers a bonus of taxpayer money for tagging...

The food the world wastes produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any country except for China and the United States, the United Nations said in a report. Every year, about a third of all food for human consumption—around 1.3 billion tonnes (1.4 tons)—is wasted, along with all the energy, water and chemicals needed to produce it and dispose of it. Almost 30 percent of the world’s farmland, and a volume of water equivalent to the annual discharge of the River Volga, are in effect being used in vain. … In the industrialized world, much of the waste comes from consumers...