National Food Waste Prevention Week Recap

Can potatoes and onions be stored together? Can you really freeze eggs for up to a year? These were just some of the many important and interesting questions discussed during this past April’s National Food Waste Prevention Week. Community members and organizations from around the world joined together April 10-16 to educate and inspire cultural change about food waste in order to help families save money, reduce the negative impact of food waste on the environment, and address hunger in our communities.

Manna Food Center and Community Food Rescue (CFR) collaborated with various organizations in the DMV area to provide virtual and in-person events.  Here are a few highlights from our local participation:

Food Waste Innovations and Savings

The DC Department of Small and Local Business Development partnered with the Latino Economic Development Center to give a virtual presentation discussing tips on cutting food waste in local businesses. The presentation was followed by a panel of 2022 Food Waste Innovation Grant winners, where they discussed how their reductions in food waste have cut costs in both disposal fees and food purchasing.

Erase the Doubt about Food Safety

CFR partnered with the Montgomery County Food Council to present a webinar about food safety for individual consumers. Food waste makes up 25% of waste in the average household garbage bin. This food could potentially have been eaten or composted! We discussed how to minimize and hopefully erase doubts about whether a food is safe to eat. Being able to more confidently distinguish between safe and unsafe foods helps save money and protects the environment. A great tip for keeping berries from spoiling is to sort through strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries before you refrigerate, and pick out any that are moldy or spoiled. One bad berry can quickly spoil the rest!

Bread to Tap Tasting

What can businesses do when they have a surplus of bread at the end of the day? Make beer! Food Rescue US-DC, our food recovery neighbors in Washington DC, collaborated with RavenHook Bakehouse and Urban Garden Brewing for their first ever bread-to-tap brew, called “Breaking Bread.” The April inaugural tasting, hosted at Right Proper Brewing, brought the collaborators together with the DC departments of Small and Local Business Development, and Energy and Environment.

Brewing day uses surplus rescued bread to make beer.

RavenHook prides itself on selling fresh artisan breads and pastries. Owner Chris Girardot donates his surplus bread every day, but there are times when there is even more to share. Urban Garden Brewing is DC’s BIPOC female-owned brewery. Each of their beers is inspired by local products and African brewing traditions, this time pulling from 7,000-year-old Egyptian traditions of brewing from bread. Urban Garden Brewing’s newest brew replaces grain with leftover bread from RavenHook Bakehouse. CFR joined the public celebration along with other food waste prevention organizations, including Eat or Toss, and the Montgomery County Food Council.

Our DMV Food Recovery partners joined together to celebrate Food Waste Prevention Week.

To answer the questions mentioned at the beginning of this post, potatoes and onions should not be stored together to avoid the quickening of sprouting and rotting. And yes! You really can freeze raw, whole, or slightly-beaten eggs for up to a year! For more details on these events, visit DMV Food Recovery Week. Next year, National Food Waste Prevention Week will run April 1-7. We hope to see you online at a national event and in-person at our local events!