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The average American wastes around $1,500 of food annually. For most people, this food waste goes into the trash and is destined for a landfill.
Reencle is here to change that by making composting at home as easy as throwing food scraps away. Instead of throwing your food waste in the trash, just dump it in their home composter and wait for biology to break it down!
Food Waste in America
Household Food Waste
Almost 100 billion pounds of food, or 145 billion meals, is wasted in America. It’s estimated that half of that food waste comes from households. Quantifying household food waste is tricky and challenging, but it is essential to understanding how our actions can create a real impact.
Food Waste in Landfills
Of municipality solid waste, food is the largest category at 22%. Plus, food waste in landfills turns anaerobic (without oxygen), creating the perfect environment for bacteria that produce methane, accounting for 1.6% of all human-made emissions. It may not seem much, but methane has a more potent greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, though the molecule is shorter-lived. Solving the problem of food waste deserves attention.
Meet Reencle, The Home Composter
Household Food Waste, Be Gone
Reencle, a South Korean-based company, has taken the home composting scene by storm. South Korea has eliminated food waste and is now leading the global movement towards creating circular solutions for food waste.
With so much food waste originating from households, the gap in simplifying composting seems evident retrospectively. Reencle stands out from the competition in many ways, as they embrace the biological composting process, and their bin speeds up the decomposition process.
Embracing Both Biology & Technology
When you receive your Reencle, you must jumpstart the biology using their “Compost Starter Kit,” before adding any food waste. This kit contains activated charcoal, wood pellets, microbes, and glucose.
There are three microorganisms inside: one that loves salt (Basophile), one that loves acid (acidophiles), and one that loves heat (thermophile).
In combination with these microbes, the bin has three metal prongs that rotate more than 950 times per day, aerating the food scraps, keeping them from going anaerobic, and incorporating the materials together.
Dehydrated Food Waste vs Compost
Many home composters are akin to dehydrators than they are composting. Reencle doesn’t expose the food waste to high heat, which eliminates the water content crucial to compost’s decomposition process.
Microbiology is essential to compost.
The dehydration process successfully reduces the mass and volume of food waste. However, it doesn't break down the organic material into the humus-like substance that defines actual compost.
Dehydrated food waste needs to undergo further decomposition to become true compost that can be applied as a soil amendment. Reencle assists biology by embracing and empowering nature’s decomposition process!
Don’t Waste Food! Period.
Since half of food waste occurs at home, we can’t blame institutions entirely. Our actions are crucial to solving the problem of food waste.
Besides purchasing a Reencle or starting a compost pile at home, we can all take many daily actions to reduce our personal food waste.
Understanding Expiration Dates
Most of us misunderstand expiration dates to no fault of our own. They are confusing, and we want to eat safe food. You may not realize that food date labels generally indicate freshness, not safety.
If the food is spoiled or showing signs of mold, use your judgment before throwing it out. Otherwise, eat it and enjoy!
Process & Upcycle Ripe Foods
If you have too much fruit ripening too quickly, do something with it.
You can freeze it using a vacuum food sealer or process it into jam or banana bread. During peak growing season, find some time to make jams, sauces, and salsas and fill your freezer. We are spoiled to have all produce available year-round and have forgotten that these crops only produce seasonally.
Go to the farmer’s market and ask for their “ugly” produce. Sometimes, they will give it to you for free, and you can make delicious upcycled food products.
Get Chickens & Feed Them Food Scraps
If you can, get chickens; they are magical. They turn food scraps into eggs. I know this isn’t an option for everyone, but I wish it were. Check with your local regulations to see if you can start your own backyard flock.
Belgium experimented with giving a few chickens to households to reduce food waste, and the results were outstanding. They distributed 6,000 urban chickens, which reduced 100 tons of waste into the local landfill in the first month! Plus, those families had loads of eggs for themselves and others.
Donate to a Local Food Bank
Much of the food we throw away could be donated to local food banks. Not the food scraps from our plates, but often, our pantries are full of canned goods and prepared foods that we don’t eat until we throw them away.
Maybe it’s time to go through your cupboards, clean out anything you haven’t eaten yet, and bring it to your local food bank. Then, you can become more mindful of buying more than you need next time you visit the grocery store.
In a country where we waste 40% of the food we produce, yet 44 million people are food insecure, something is seriously wrong. Donating to a local food bank makes a difference, even if it’s just a few items.
Find a Local Composting Program
If you can’t afford a Reencle or compost in your backyard, then find a local composting program nearby. When I lived in an apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, R.City was my best option. They even came and picked up the food scraps weekly. It was less than $30 per month, and they donated their finished compost to urban farms around the city.
Composting is great, but we can take many actions beforehand to ensure that our food waste becomes a resource for another part of the food system.
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