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Easy things to do - stop wasting food

7/13/2020

1 Comment

 
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I try to go to every Town Council meeting, and update the Council on the activities of the Climate Action Committee. 

Often, a person or two will get up and react, and the person might say something like, "I don't have enough money to buy solar panels." The implication being, if you don't have enough money to buy solar panels, the climate movement will not welcome you. 

Nothing can be further from the truth. Every one of us, every day, has so many ways we can be part of the solution. 

A couple of years ago, I remember reading in the IJ about a grant that was given to the Town of Fairfax. The grant came from the County of Marin, and it was to try to help us figure out what kind of opportunity the Town of Fairfax had to reduce its food waste. 

Food waste, you see, is a large contributor to our greenhouse gas emissions. 

According to the experts, Food Waste generates about 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions. We don't have good data on this for our Town, but we do know from our last annual greenhouse gas inventory that about 7% of our total emissions come from waste in general. It is not clear how much of that comes from food waste, but my gosh, what an easy thing to fix. For us to get our emissions to zero, we are going to need to do some difficult things down the road. It would be so easy for us to make an immediate dent in the problem by eliminating this easy source of emissions. Sustainable Fairfax has some great resources to help us all take very simple, FREE actions that will help us all. Click here too for more ideas.

When food waste goes into the landfill, it breaks down and emits methane, and accomplishes nothing. When, we can prevent food waste, in any number of ways, we can SAVE MONEY and we can eliminate a big chunk of emissions. Then, when we put our food waste in the right bin, we can eliminate our emissions and we can create compost to nourish our soil. 

We weren't able to take the County's money, but, we do not need to turn away from the opportunity to waste less food and to sequester carbon in the form of compost. We are the Town of Fairfax. For decades we have helped show the way to better futures. We don't all have the money to buy solar panels; but we all can help by paying attention to eliminating food waste, and by composting all we can. Let's do this together. 

(And, sign up for MCE Deep Green!)

1 Comment
Jennifer link
7/14/2020 11:35:36 am

Thanks for the informative blog!

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