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About Food Too Good To Waste

Industrial Food Processing

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Making Power

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Home And Garden

Community Gardens

Working together on a gardening project is a great way to strengthen a community. Valuable, nutritious, local food can feed the neighborhood, be sold to improve the garden, or be donated to those who are food insecure. Using and making compost can make the soil rich and the food tasty. Small orchards can yield fruit that can be preserved, eaten or sold.

Compost for the Garden

Most gardeners will tell you that it’s hard to make enough good compost. Missouri Organic donates over 1000 cubic yards of compost per year to community gardens of all types. Individuals can bring a truck, buy their compost and be loaded quickly. For small users, buying bags of compost, top soil and other products makes good sense.

Underground Composter

An underground composter can be a buried bucket with the bottom removed or a device such as a Green Cone. The idea is that food scraps can be dumped into a hole where bacteria and worms reduce the volume, and any odors cannot escape. Being mostly water, the food scraps turn into a rich liquid which can feed a flower bed or garden. Because food scraps are mostly water, the in-ground space can hold amazingly large amounts of scraps which seem to melt away. The key is to never add bulky items like leaves, paper or wood chips.

Mulch for Trees

Mulching around trees decorates the landscape and feeds the trees just what they want, which is material from the forest floor. Trees like woody material over their roots. This gives them the perfect growing conditions. Mulch rings can extend out to the “drip line,” the edge of the trees branches. Don’t pile the mulch up around the trunk, but keep it at ground level. 2-4 inches is enough to get the mulch ring established but mulch decomposes and needs to be reapplied every 2-3 years.

Feeding Chickens

Chickens benefit greatly from food scraps in their diet. Backyard chickens are very popular in many cities. New laws are being passed to permit homeowners to keep chickens in their backyards. Fresh eggs are a great reward for recycling food scraps.

Read More:
Keeping Backyard Chickens ➚

At Home

Using Food at Home

Smart preparation, smart use and smart storage are three great areas to be aware of to help reduce waste. Chopping food in advance and storing it ready to use in the refrigerator makes for faster meals and less waste. Using food in a timely way and paying attention to which foods spoil first also help. Finally storing food in a way that it can be used easily and quickly is a great way to avoid wasting food. Once good food is in your home, it’s a shame not use it well.

Download these printable charts for more help

-Help your food store longer

-Beating the use-by date

-Track your food waste

Compost on Lawns

Having a nice lawn may mean that you need to build up the soil it grows in. It the soil is rich, less fertilizer, water, herbicide and pesticide is needed. Adding compost to lawns retains more water after rains, increases soil health and resistance to drought while eliminating exposure to herbicides and pesticides,

Curbside Yard Trimmings Collection

For many cities collection of yard trimmings is brown paper bags at curbside has been happening for thirty years. This system is a convenient way for homeowners to maintain their properties and to contribute to a large supply of materials for mulch and composting. Many systems provide free access to mulch and compost for participating citizens.

Curbside Food Scrap Collection

These systems provide a container per week for food scraps on the front porch or at the curb.