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Source of biggest food waste in America? You.

 
Trash that has been dumped by trucks is compacted and moved around on top of the landfill in Polk County.
Trash that has been dumped by trucks is compacted and moved around on top of the landfill in Polk County.
Published Dec. 15, 2015

TAMPA — The white Thermo King truck idles while Voltario "V" Kelley slides a finger down the day's itinerary: pickups at nine stores, delivery at one church, then back to the distribution center. Tucking the sheaf of papers into the sun visor, he eases the truck out of park and pulls away from Transport Drive at 5:50 a.m., a little behind schedule.

Before most of us are awake, repurposed Chiquita banana boxes are changing hands all over the Tampa Bay area. At Kelley's first stop, Publix No. 0793 in Plant City, seven boxes are packed with frozen ground sirloin, meat that will make it back to Feeding Tampa Bay's headquarters. From there, food goes out to more than 600 local charities and food banks. The nonprofit is, as executive director Thomas Mantz said, "the biggest recycler in Tampa Bay."

There is plenty of food to be reused. The source of the biggest food waste in the country might come as a surprise. It's the buyer of too many BOGOs. It's the maker of too many big meals. It's the cleaner of the back of the fridge.

It's you.

• • •

Forty percent of food produced in the United States goes to waste. That's equivalent to filling the Rose Bowl Stadium every day. The story gets even worse than that, according to JoAnne Berkenkamp, a senior advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

Ninety-five percent of that food waste goes to landfills, where anaerobic decomposition makes it sit around for years. The price tag on all that wasted food? She said it's $162 billion in the United States (by comparison, she said, the obesity crisis consumes $180 billion a year).

Food manufacturing and processing is a fairly efficient system, according to Berkenkamp, who works to improve the efficiency of our food system. But look further down the food chain, she said, and "the restaurant piece and consumer piece are where the action is."

Grocery stores account for about 10 percent of food waste, restaurants are responsible for 30 percent of the waste, other food service makes up 10 percent, and a staggering 42 percent happens in consumers' homes. That means the average family is throwing away $1,500 a year.

Faced with those stats and the memory of years of gone-squishy zucchini lurking in the crisper, is this a hands-in-the-air "what are you going to do" situation?

Nope. In the Tampa Bay area there are increasingly sophisticated networks of individuals and organizations devoted to what is commonly called "food recovery."

Publix partnered with Feeding America Tampa Bay, Feeding Tampa Bay's former name, in 2009. Since then, Publix has donated over 164 million pounds of product — the equivalent of more than 136 million meals, spokesman Brian West said.

They don't donate any cooked, ready-to-eat items (think rotisserie chicken), West said. But they do pass on some items you might pass up.

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"We donate perishable items that no longer meet our quality standards, but are certainly still fit for human consumption," he said. "A simple example is an apple with a bruise."

Mantz said one culinary trend has dramatically increased the complexity of food donation. Seven or eight years ago, he said, 80 percent of donations were in cans and boxes. These days almost 70 percent is fresh food, which mirrors consumer preoccupations.

"Hyper-attention to freshness has become a problem," Berkenkamp said. "There's this cult of fresh food, which is, let's face it, more perishable than frozen or canned."

To cope with the more limited life expectancy of fresh foods, Feeding Tampa Bay has adopted the delivery strategy that Kelley and his Thermo King followed: Make nine pickups and then deliver fresh food — dairy, produce, baked goods — directly to a food bank partner, without a stop at the warehouse for sorting and repacking. In some cases, food partners now pick up directly from donating stores. Meat is the exception. It goes back to the warehouse to be more equally distributed.

So why do grocery chains like Publix and Walmart have so much fresh food to donate — 46 million pounds to Feeding Tampa Bay alone in 2014?

It's all about consumer expectations. Customers expect abundantly stocked shelves, enormous variety and cosmetic perfection, a combination that can swiftly get out of hand with poor handling or insufficient staffing.

A misunderstanding of sell-by dates is also problematic: Without standardized, explained verbiage (no, "best sold by" is not the same as "expired"), customers are leery of buying items close to their marked dates.

And they're throwing things in the trash way earlier than they really need to.

• • •

Restaurants have it even worse. Waste is a function of overly large portions, extensive menus, unpredictable consumption and the challenges of donating. Berkenkamp said nationally the rate of restaurant donation is about 1½ percent, despite the fact that the Good Samaritan Act passed in 1996 minimizes liability if food is given with good will.

Despite the challenges, Tampa Bay restaurants cope with waste in a variety of ways.

At the Refinery, Greg Baker has filled compost buckets to give to the Seminole Heights Community Garden. Byron Gabel, executive chef for the Grand Hyatt, is in the process of buying a digestor to break down plate scrapings and pineapple tops into usable fuel. In general, he said, the hotel doesn't produce food bankable excess, and if buffet items have been out more than a few hours, "we're cognizant of food safety."

For chef Rich Willerer at the Tampa Marriott Waterside, fry oil gets recycled by a company called RTI, and paper, plastic, cans and glass get sorted in colored bins for recycling. But food itself? It's tough.

"We tried to do a full recycling program to include food waste, but it didn't work out. Next year we are looking at the Enviropure system (that) breaks the solid waste down with an enzyme," Willerer said.

Caitlin Peacock is coordinator for a new project from Tampa Bay Network to End Hunger. It is the prototype for an app that functions as a network for pooled food provision data.

"Less than 22 percent of restaurants donate to food pantries," she said. "It's logistically difficult for them. They don't have the time or resources to find a feeding program. (So we're) creating a system so that any registered vetted nonprofit can claim the food via the app."

That means when a store has 500 gallons of frozen vegetable soup, they can log into the app and alert a charity.

They're hoping to debut the app next summer, and restaurants like Bonefish Grill are eager to get onboard.

"The goal," Peacock said, "is that the food doesn't go into a landfill."

• • •

The final piece is what happens behind closed doors in our homes.

As people become more detached from cooking, how to use leftovers and so forth is a much harder proposition, Berkenkamp said. We buy too much; we cook too much; we don't adequately inventory or rotate what we have.

She said the important thing is to change social norms — as with the littering campaign in the 1970s, we need better education on things like date labeling and food safety. In fact, the Ad Council — the folks who brought us the crying Indian, Smokey the Bear, and "a mind is a terrible thing to waste" — have debuted a food safety campaign aimed at curbing waste.

Meanwhile, there are steps we can all take right now.

• Avoid impulse or bulk purchases unless you have a plan to use them.

• Plan meals, make grocery lists, stick with them.

• Many foods can be safely consumed after their "sell by" and "use by" dates. Use your nose and your eyes, or use a website such as stilltasty.com or eatbydate.com.

• Buy imperfect products. Nature makes lots of delicious things that look funny.

• Take the time to store things appropriately. Don't know the best method for keeping herbs fresh or where in the fridge to put meat? The Internet has a wealth of good information.

• And if you have excess, find a nearby food pantry or charity that accepts walk-in donations.

• • •

Voltario Kelley's truck idles in the driveway of Truth Outreach Ministry in Temple Terrace until pastor Michelle Kelly and her volunteers arrive. His clipboard says this: 960 pounds of bakery bread, 392 pounds of other baked goods, 312 pounds of dairy, 1,560 pounds of produce, 200 pounds of refrigerated boxes. Kelley breaks a sweat as he unloads the pallets into the church's kitchen.

Outside, a banner reads "Free groceries, Wednesday 2 to 3 p.m." Inside, volunteers start sifting. Potatoes go here. A passel of perfectly ripe red d'anjou pears is treated with care, their perfume just detectable in the warm room. It's a huge haul, courtesy of Publix, Winn-Dixie, Walmart and Target. But is it enough?

"We have new people every week. Marriages break up, a husband is in prison. They see the sign," said pastor Kelly, watching the volunteers begin to assemble individual boxes for about 80 families.

"We turn people away every week. There's never enough."

Contact Laura Reiley at lreiley@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2293. Follow @lreiley.