You are here

Reduce Foodwaste (Ongoing)

Recent Project Updates

  • 11/10/2023

    Members from the ISC, ZeroWaste Interns, as well as Daphne Hulse and Codie Sterner attended a tour of the Illinois Street Residence Halls and their Grind2Energy system today.

  • 8/14/2023

    Sarthak Prasad shared 2018 notes from conversations held with stakeholders at The Ohio State University, West Lafayette (Purdue University), Bevier Cafe (University of Illinois), US Army Corps -- Champaign, and Michigan State University -- East La

Key Objective

Associated Collections

Description

The iCAP 2020 objective 5.4 is to "Promote food scraps reduc-tion on campus through a behav-ior change campaign, and tracking and recovery of surplus food for do-nation, with at least five new areas tracking and reporting their food waste by FY22." The responsible campus unit for championing this objective is F&S.

According to the EPA, more than 34 million tons of food waste gas generated in 2010 alone. Food scraps are the largest percentage of waste going to municipal landfills and combusted for energy recovery, making up 21 percent of the waste in landfills. Dumping food waste into landfills causes odor upon decomposition and attracts flies and vermin. Rotting waste in landfills also produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas.

Reducing the amount of food waste going into landfills has economic, social and environmental benefits. Environmental benefits include reducing the amount of methane landfills create, reducing the amount of resources needed for food production, and improving soil quality through composting. Economic benefits include lower costs associated with disposal and reduction in costs associated with over-purchasing. Social benefits are mostly related to using the food produced to feed the millions of Americans that struggle to find enough food each day, as opposed to wasting such food.

No description has been provided yet.

Landfilled Post Consumer Foodwaste (est. llbs./year)

Tons of pre- and post-consumer food scraps diverted via Grind2Energy

Themes

Project Location(s)

This map is interactive! Click (or touch) and drag to pan; scroll (or pinch) to zoom.

View larger location(s) map