The “farm bill”, the largest and most important piece of legislation for food and farm policy in the United States, is scheduled to be reauthorized in 2018. Emily Broad Leib, Director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic (Harvard FLPC), wrote in a Huffington Post article that there is a sizable opportunity to cut…
Infinite Herbs and Specialties is a distributor of culinary herbs. Their packaging facility in Everett trims, packages, and ships herbs received in bulk from their production facilities. Infinite Herbs worked with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and RecyclingWorks in MA to set up organics collection to comply with the Commercial Food Waste Disposal Ban.…
Some quantity of spoiled and damaged foods are an inevitable part of supermarket and food manufacturing operations. Being able to divert these food products from landfills has been a challenge given that many foods are sealed in packaging. However, BioCycle details how one Massachusetts company, E.L. Harvey & Sons Inc., invested in mechanical separation technology…
While food waste in the United States is a systemic problem with massive implications, there are many local organizations across the nation that are developing cutting edge solutions to cut the amount of food that gets landfilled. ReFED, a nonprofit comprised of leaders across all sectors who are dedicated to finding scalable solutions to reducing…
In the face of a changing dairy market, Barstow’s Longview Dairy Farm in Hadley, MA capitalized on another product from their cows: manure. Manure Manager reports that Vanguard Renewables invested in the construction of an anaerobic digester that allows the farm to repurpose the manure as both fuel and fertilizer while reducing business operation costs.…
RecycleMania, a national competition to mobilize waste reduction at colleges and universities, is accepting case study submissions for creative waste reduction or educational campaigns. The RecycleMania Campus Engagement Case Study Competition is a way for colleges and universities to showcase their efforts to reduce waste and influence institutional and personal practices. There are three types…
A BioCycle article demonstrates the progress Massachusetts has accomplished in eliminating food waste and the continuing challenges and opportunities for growth. The article was written by John Fischer, Branch Chief for Commercial Waste Reduction at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Elizabeth Johnston who is a Senior Manager at ICF’s Cambridge office. Massachusetts has…
In March, the Cambridge Department of Public Works (DPW) called the RecyclingWorks hotline to find an outlet for the surplus food from a meal prepared for their overnight snow crew. RecyclingWorks provided the Cambridge DPW with several potential food rescue outlets to help donate these surplus meals. The Cambridge DPW connected with the St. Bartholomew’s…
A graduate student at the Harvard University Extension School, Monica Munoz, authored a paper regarding organic waste management in the hotel sector in Massachusetts and the United States at large. The paper discusses the impacts of the Commercial Organics Waste Ban on affected hotels, the economic benefits of reducing food waste, and the potential that…
Spoiler Alert, a company which offers software to facilitate the donation of surplus food, created a list of resources for food waste in all six New England states. The section for each state has information on relevant state laws and waste bans, state agencies, and non-profit organizations that work with food waste diversion and donation.…
