Food Rescue

bins of red apples, green apples and letteuce

Food waste is the largest component of landfill space by volume. When food waste degrades in landfills it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas with 28 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. Because of this, food waste has a large impact on climate change. In fact, Project Drawdown lists reducing food waste as the number one way to combat climate change. This page outlines what you can do as a Lakewood resident or area business utilizing EPA’s Wasted Food Scale as a guide.

Food Waste Prevention

Most food waste occurs at the household and consumer-facing business level.  

Prevent food waste at home by: 

  • Meal planning, learning more effective storage practices for perishables, more actively use your freezer to extend the lifespan of ingredients, organizing your fridge, upcycling past prime produce (see next section). 

  • You can also contribute to reducing upstream food waste by buying marked down perishable goods or purchasing imperfect produce which would otherwise be wasted due to superficial imperfections. 

Prevent food waste in your food service establishment by: 

  • Investing in a food waste tracking software, improve inventory management and reduce overproduction, condense and remove wasteful items from your menu, offer smaller or half portions, and remove self serve or buffet lines. 

  • Learn more about how to reduce food waste as a business from the EPA. 

Food Upcycling

Upcycling entails adding value to ingredients through additional processing.  

  • You can upcycle at home by utilizing past prime produce in smoothies, juices, gelatos, jams, salsas, breads, pies, purees, soups, and stocks.   

  • You can also support upcycling by buying upcycled products online or at your grocery! 

Food Donation

1 in 9 Coloradans is food insecure, meanwhile each day millions of pounds of good food is wasted. There is much to be done to make our entire food system more equitable and efficient but at the local level, you can participate in food rescue by: 

Food donation at the household level: 

  • Support businesses you know have a donation program in place for excess food. 

Food donation for businesses: 

1. If your workplace generates excess food, start a conversation with leadership about setting up a donation program. Encourage them with the following facts: 

2. Identify potential eligible food to donate. 

3. Set up a call with a local food rescue organization like The Action Center or Joy’s Kitchen to clarify how to prepare food for donation, if they can pick up, and any metrics they can provide. 

Feeding Animals

After feeding hungry people comes feeding animals. Livestock can easily eat certain feedstocks that still have nutritional value but would not be appropriate for people.  

Utilizing this tactic at home: 

  • If you and your neighbors don’t mind critters in your backyard, certain leftovers can be very appetizing to wildlife such as racoons, fox, and opossum.  

  • Having a few chickens of your own can keep household organic waste to a minimum. 

  • Join Share Waste to give or take food scraps from neighbors or shops which can be fed to animals.  

Utilizing this tactic as a businesses (i.e. producer of large amounts of nutritious food scraps such as orchards, breweries, or juicers): 

  • Research and reach out to local farms or homesteads who have cattle, horse, goats, pigs, or chicken. 

  • Provide them with a description of your food scraps (quantity, frequency of generation, and composition) and offer a sample of the scraps as a trial.  

  • Donated scraps must be free of anything inedible like produce stickers or anything else the farmer does not want.  

  • Keep the scraps in a cool place so they are in no danger of fermenting and deliver them/arrange for pick up the same day they are generated. 

Gleaning Food

Gleaning food is the process of collecting leftover produce from farm fields or orchard trees which was left unharvested for economic or logistical constraints. Lakewood residents can participate in gleaning events all over the Front Range and even in Lakewood through UpRoot Colorado.

Composting

Read more about composting in Lakewood here.

Anaerobic Digestion

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is the process of mixing food waste with other organic matter and microbes in a large system without air to produce a biogas and digestate (often used as fertilizer). It is most common at dairy farms to process manure into energy but is an increasingly common way to process food waste. AD operations are not common in Colorado.

Garbage Disposal

Even if your home has one, it’s not a good idea to put food waste down your garbage disposal for the following reasons: 

  1. Your plumbing may not be able to handle it.
  2. If it does make it past your pipes, it can contribute to costly blockages in the city and water district’s pipes – especially food which contains fats, oils, and greases.
  3. Food waste can produce methane as it degrades inside of the pipes.  

 

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