Yesterday, Food Tank hosted a groundbreaking event on the global problems of food loss and food waste. Experts from all over the world convened in New York City to share their experiences, research, and recommendations for the future on how to make a dent in the 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted each year. New York City alone contributes 600,000 tons of food to this waste. But the presenters provided stories of success for preventing waste in fields, kitchens, schools, restaurants, and our homes.
The event featured speakers from a wide variety of background, including Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland; Emily M. Broad Leib, Director of Food Law and Policy at Harvard Law School; Mary Cleaver of The Green Table and The Cleaver Co.; Christine Datz-Romero of the Lower East Side Ecology Center; Kevin Duffy with City Harvest; John Filippelli, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Elise Golan of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); Dana Gunders of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); Brian Halweil of Edible Communities; Stephanie Hanson with the One Acre Fund; Nick Nuttall of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP); Gary Oppenheimer of AmpleHarvest.org; Tristram Stuart of Feeding the 5000; and Marcel Van Ooyen of GrowNYC. The event was moderated by Diane Hatz, founder of Change Food and coordinator of TEDxManhattan, and featured opening and closing remarks by Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of Food Tank. Recording artist Jen Chapin performed “Feed Your Baby,” among other songs about problems in today’s food system.
Food Waste Free NYC contributed new insight on solutions to food waste to the recent global conversation on the topic, including new reports from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic: Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources and The Dating Game, respectively.
For those who were not able to attend the event last night or watch the livestream, please watch the recording of the entire panel here.
