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Food System
How to Keep Food Safe in Power Outages and Floods
Nov 9th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
When dealing with severe weather, the priority is keeping yourself, your family and your pets safe. If the power goes out -- and is out for a while -- it's important to keep your food from spoiling and know how to decide what to toss it if does go bad.
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Food System
Join Us and Foodstand for #NoFoodWaste November!
Nov 4th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
As we head into the holiday season, it's a great time to challenge yourself to minimize food waste — and get creative about it! Our friends at Foodstand seem to agree. This month, we're thrilled that they are choosing to use their new app to inspire food lovers to waste less and share tips.
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Food System
Imperfect Produce: Giving 'Uglies' a Chance
Oct 29th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
Did you know that most grocery stores won’t buy bell peppers that can’t stand up straight? Strict produce cosmetic standards require peppers to have a perfect bell shape. “If you put it on a table and it tips over onto its side, it’s going to be rejected,” says Ben Simon.
Simon is one of the founders of Imperfect Produce, a startup we’ve recently added to our portfolio of investments. The San Francisco business sources cosmetically imperfect produce from farms and sells it in affordable weekly subscription boxes. In addition to moving this food back onto our plates, they are recovering the energy, water, and other resources used to grow all of that so called “ugly’ produce.
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Food System
White House Recognizes Sustainable Agriculture Changemakers
Oct 27th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
The White House recently honored 12 agricultural leaders as Champions of Change for Sustainable and Climate-Smart Agriculture. They were recognized for leading efforts in sustainable agriculture that benefit soil, air, and water quality while helping to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions. Among them was our newest board member, Erin Fitzgerald Sexson. Sexson is senior vice president of global sustainability at Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.
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Food System
'Waste Free Kitchen Handbook' Offers Advice for Home Cooks
Oct 12th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
Even for the most motivated among us, cutting down on food waste at home can mean changing lifelong habits of shopping, cooking and eating. Luckily, there's a new book that can help. The Waste Free Kitchen Handbook by Dana Gunders, staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, is a slim, encouraging guide to wasting less food packed with practical, attainable strategies for busy people.
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Food System
3 New York Restaurants that Grow Their Own Food
Sep 30th, 2015 | By Nikki Carenza
One of my favorite parts of my internship with Sustainable America this summer was that I was encouraged to explore new ideas I was interested in. While I was researching the green roofing trend, I stumbled upon a rooftop farm in New York City called Brooklyn Grange and signed up for a tour. Learning about the farm inspired me to visit some restaurants that are growing their own food in the city. Here are a few interesting eateries I found.
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Food System
Solving the Problem of Moving Day Food Waste
Sep 29th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
Growing up working for his family’s 90-year-old moving business, Adam Lowy saw lots of things get thrown out in the stress of moving day. Often, food would be part of the purge. Hating to see it go to waste, Lowy started asking customers a few years ago if they’d like to donate the food. It turned out, they did; in one month, Lowy had collected over 300 pounds of nonperishable food. Find out what happened when he took it to a New Jersey food bank.
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Food System
USDA and EPA Set Historic Goal to Cut U.S. Food Waste in Half
Sep 16th, 2015 | By Amy Leibrock
Today is a groundbreaking day in the fight against food waste. The Obama administration announced the United States’ first-ever food waste reduction goal: Reduce food waste in America by 50 percent by 2030.
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Food System
High-Rise Urban Farming
Aug 31st, 2015 | By Nikki Carenza
Farming may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of New York City, but some of its residents have solved the challenge of restricted space by utilizing the city’s most underused space: rooftops. A recent visit to Brooklyn Grange demonstrated how creative farmers today can produce local food no matter where they live.
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Food System
How Fertilizer Made from Food Waste Can Help Drought-Stricken Farms
Aug 26th, 2015 | By Gray Peckham
The U.S. industrial farming system has largely left natural fertilizers behind in favor of chemical-based fertilizers in the search for more efficiency and higher yields. But there’s a downside to increased productivity – chemicals strip the soil of its nutrients and damage the natural biome. Farmers have known for millennia that manure, compost and other organic matter benefit the soil. But solid organics are heavy and difficult to spread over the millions of acres of farmland that need it.
We’ve recently invested in a company with an exciting product that gets around both of these problems. Read more about California Safe Soil’s new Harvest-to-Harvest liquid fertilizer made from food waste.
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