In the race to achieve carbon neutrality, many businesses are looking for different ways to cut emissions, whether by limiting high-carbon transit, becoming more energy efficient at home, or reducing our consumption of meat.
But there are some things that individual consumers can do that don’t require major lifestyle changes, making them more likely options for regular people who want to help the planet but don’t want to. to abandon their holiday travel schedule.
One such way is to reduce food waste. This is no small problem: According to Feeding America, in the US alone, about 40% of the food supply is wasted, which comes out to about 119 billion pounds of food, or about 140 billion wasted food, every year. That’s as much CO2 emissions as 212 million cars, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Another way to think about the 40% number is to understand that it works out to about 119 billion pounds of food, or about 140 billion wasted food each year.
But there are a few startups working on the food waste problem, including Fridgely and Mill. Fridgely, an app created as a hobby by a passionate engineer, shows that technology can make it easy to avoid wasting food, as long as you can get users to stick around. The Mill, in contrast, has an efficient system to help collect wasted food and convert it into food items that can be recycled into a country’s food production system. The mill starts with chicken feed as its final product, for reference.
