Saving the World One Crouton at a Time

How much money do you throw away each year when it comes to food waste? According to EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)*, every year, Americans throw away $165 billion dollars in waste. On an average, American families waste 25% of their food which is equivalent to wasting $14,000 dollars a year. EPA also states that, at the rate of only 3% of all the food waste being composted, food is the area of waste which is the least recycled/composted.

What is the solution to prevent this? Recently, Valley Waste Management* has given everyone a compost bin. You can use this bin to discard food scraps and compostable items soiled with food. However, not very many people know about this new service, or don’t understand the importance of composting.

A Girl Scout Robotics Team, The Electrified Bots (FLL Team 95) realized the severity of this problem, and decided to educate their community about this issue. To do this, the team held a booth at the Annual Girl Scout Haunted House, where they communicated the importance of composting food waste to over 230 girl scouts, their parents and scout troop leaders. This effectively raised the awareness of many people in our community. In addition to this, the team plans to communicate the importance of composting to local schools in the area.

Food waste is the area of waste that takes up the most space in landfills, but is also the area that is the easiest to reduce. Because of this, FLL Team 95, The Electrified Bots encourages you to help prevent our landfills from filling up with waste items, such as food waste, that could easily be diverted. To help prevent the excess food waste that ends up dominating our landfills, FLL Team 95 is urging you to avoid buying excess food that you will not use. The team is also making appeal to the community to try to put your food waste, and food scraps into the green bin so they can be composted.

The first step in solving this problem is to avoid food waste. To learn more about wasted food basics and ways to reduce food waste , please visit http://www2.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-wasted-food-basics. Please recycle your food waste responsibly in organic bins provided free of cost by Valley Waste Management.

*We are in no way affiliated with Valley Waste Management or EPA, and are not advertising, or promoting for them. Our only purpose is to educate our community about composting, and food waste.

A Robotics Team’s Project about Composting
By: Radhika Gawde, FLL Team 95