Apps that connect customers to discounted leftovers that would otherwise be thrown out, are a great way to reduce food waste, but when you zoom out and look at the data, how much do these apps actually help the environment?

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

We’ve all heard about how food waste is a problem and there are a lot of apps that try to prevent  leftovers from ending up in the trash. But how do they work? And do they really cut down on food waste?

We had Sedi-Anne Blachford and Iman Khanbhai from our Possibly Team look into this.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: Hi, Megan!

Iman Khanbai: Hello!

Megan Hall: So first off, can you explain what these apps do?

Sedi-Anne Blachford: Well there are a handful of them out there, and they’re all a little different, but the idea is, if you use the app, you can find discounts on food that restaurants, grocery stores, or cafes would otherwise be throwing away.

Megan Hall: So, like if a bakery has day-old bread, you can buy it for less money?

Iman Khanbai: Exactly – but it could be anything. Vegetables, donuts, burritos… the list goes on.

Megan Hall: Cool. Sounds great.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: It certainly sounds like it, but we wanted to investigate to find out if it’s as good as it seems, so we called in an expert:

Tamar Makov: My name is Tamar Makov. I’m a professor of circular economy at Ben-Gurion University, and my training is in industrial ecology.

Iman Khanbai: Tamar studies how digital tools like apps affect people’s consumption and behavior, and how that impacts the environment.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: She’s used her background to research a whole range of apps related to food waste, and one of her big takeaways is that we aren’t always great at predicting what is gonna be sustainable.

Tamar Makov: Oftentimes our intuition about what’s going to be more sustainable, just aren’t that good. You know what I mean? Like I know my intuition is very bad.

Iman Khanbai: And this can be the case for food sharing apps too.

Tamar Makov:  Intuitively, seems like it would be more environmental in practice. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that, because once we transition from one system of provisioning to another system, then also our behavior changes.

Megan Hall: What kind of behavior change is she talking about?

Sedi-Anne Blachford: Well for these apps, part of the question is how people spend the money that they save from buying discounted food.

Tamar Makov: If I save, you know, $300 a month by being on this food waste exchange platform, And then if I choose to buy a ticket to LA from Boston, then that probably offsets most of the benefits of reducing food waste.

Iman Khanbai: In other words, sometimes making things more efficient can actually increase, not decrease, overall consumption. Economists call this the “rebound effect.”

Tamar Makov: Because I can just afford to buy more, right?

Sedi-Anne Blachford: To see how the rebound effect shows up in food sharing apps, Tamar and her team looked at hundreds of thousands of listings on a peer-to-peer food sharing app.

Iman Khanbai: Then they estimated how much money users saved.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: And analyzed the data for different re-spending scenarios based on things like income level and location.

Iman Khanbai: They found that, depending on the specific scenario, re-spending from food sharing apps could lead to significant environmental rebound effects for carbon emissions, water consumption, and land use.

Megan Hall: What kinds of other things were people buying with that extra money?

Sedi-Anne Blachford: Well part of the problem is that it’s hard to know exactly. It could be spent on things like new clothing, recreation, or buying more food.

Megan Hall: So should we still be using these apps?

Sedi-Anne Blachford: Well Tamar says:

Tamar Makov: Definitely.

Iman Khanbai: Afterall, food sharing apps can prevent food from ending up in landfills, and less food in the landfill helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: Plus, they can help people save money on food, which is never a bad thing.

Iman Khanbai: But as Tamar says,

Tamar Makov: It’s definitely not a silver bullet and we need a lot of other solutions at the system level, rather than the individual level, to change things.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: And at the end of the day, experts agree that

Tamar Makov: The best solution is reduce.

Megan Hall: So when we’re talking about food waste, the best thing is to buy less food in the first place. But then these apps can help too.

Iman Khanbai: That’s exactly it.

Sedi-Anne Blachford: As long as you’re not using your savings on pastries to buy plane tickets.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Sedi-Anne and Iman!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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Possibly’s founder and the Provost of sustainability at Brown University Stephen Porder recently visited a supermarket chain in France that sells products other stores would have thrown away.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Here’s an interesting approach to food waste- a supermarket chain in France sells products that other stores would have thrown away. Our founder and the provost for sustainability at Brown University Stephen Porder visited one of those markets during a recent trip to Paris. He’s here to tell us more about it.

Megan Hall: Welcome, Stephen.

Stephen Porder: Hey, Megan, great to be back as always.

Megan Hall: So before we talk about the supermarkets in France, will you quickly just remind us why we care about food waste?

Stephen Porder: There are lots of reasons. But since this show is often about climate change, let’s start there. Food production accounts for about 20% of all of our greenhouse gasses, and of all that food we produce, we throw out about a third of it before it ever gets eaten. So all those greenhouse gasses, as well as all the other effects of agriculture, we’re wasting a third of that.

Megan Hall: Tell me about this food waste supermarket chain.

Stephen Porder: So in French, it’s called Nous Anti-Gaspi, Us Against Waste. And basically what they do is they find food that isn’t going rotten, but that would be thrown out for another reason.

Megan Hall: How did you hear about this place?

Stephen Porder: Actually, it was just down the street from where I was staying. There was a produce market, and then there was this thing called Nous Anti-Gaspi. And looked like they had food there. So I looked into it. So I didn’t hear about it. I just stumbled across it. But it turns out there’s a bunch of them in Paris and around France.

Megan Hall: What is it like shopping there? What kind of stuff do they have on the shelves?

Stephen Porder: It’s basically a fully stocked supermarket.

So I’m walking around Nous Anti-Gaspi. Right now I’m in the cheese section.

It’s France, right? So there’s a lot of wine. There’s a lot of incredible cheeses,

There’s a goat cheese with honey, some seven different kinds of fresh mozzarella.

There’s a lot of produce. And then there’s your staples, olive oil or flour or sugar.

Going back here, we have a whole shelves and shelves of organic eggs,

But even stuff like toothbrushes.

Why toothbrushes would be thrown out? I don’t know. But spices…

And I have to say, like the produce is awesome. I was expecting sort of the half rotten tomatoes, you know, that you would pick through and make sauce out of. But in fact, I couldn’t really tell that there was a difference between the chichi organic produce place next door and this one, in terms of the quality of the produce. It’s just they didn’t have all the things.

Megan Hall: What is wrong with these things that they would have been thrown away?

Stephen Porder: Obviously, when you think of food waste, you’re like, oh, you know, this is past its expiration date or something like that. But when I looked into it, it turns out there’s all kinds of reasons why food gets thrown away.

It was packaged wrong, or there was a typo on the label, or it was delivered too late, and so the vendor had the right to refuse the delivery…

And so all of that is like jettisoned somewhere.

Megan Hall: What lessons could this supermarket teach us here in the US?

Stephen Porder: There are apps and whatnot, and organizations that try to deal with food waste here in the US. And my experience is that there are certain sort of dedicated environmental types who will buy ugly food and go out of their way to to a special a Co-Op, but this very much had the feel of like everybody was there and they weren’t there because they were necessarily environmentalists. They were there because it was cheaper and it was just as convenient. I don’t know. It just really struck a chord with me how regular it felt while doing something that was clearly like it just makes a ton of sense.

Megan Hall: Excellent. Well, Merci Stephen for coming in today.

Stephen Porder:  Je t’en prie

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

The post What can we learn from France about food waste? appeared first on TPR: The Public’s Radio.

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Wasted food takes up lots of space in landfills and, while getting a compost bin at home is great, it isn’t enough to solve the problem. This week, we investigate how schools are taking big steps towards eliminating food waste.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

When we throw away our food, it creates some big problems. First, it takes up lots of space in our landfills – more than plastic, metal, or paper. Second, when that food decomposes it creates a lot of greenhouse gasses. So, what can we do about it?

Will Malloy and Christine Okulo from our Possibly team have more about a program that’s targeting this problem in a place where lots of people eat every day- school cafeterias.

Will Malloy: Hi Megan!

Christine Okulo: Hello!

Megan Hall: So, how do you get school cafeterias to waste less food? I know my kids are always bringing home half-eaten lunches.

Will Malloy: Good question. To find out, we talked to an organization in Rhode Island that’s trying to do just that.

Christine Okulo: The Rhode Island School Recycling Project just received more than seventy thousand dollars from the US Department of Agriculture to keep more cafeteria food out of the landfill.

Will Malloy: Their program focuses on training elementary and middle school students to sort their food into compost, recycling, and trash.

Megan Hall: How does that work?

Christine Okulo: The program identifies student leaders, who get fun titles like “Cafeteria Rangers,” to teach other students where the different types of food waste belong.

Will Malloy: Warren Heyman, the Organizing Director of the Rhode Island School Recycling Project, says these new skills often come in handy outside of school.

Warren Heyman: We’ve heard stories from principals who tell us that some of the Rangers have gone home and then challenged their parents to be more environmentally sound and to stop using paper plates and to start composting.

Christine Okulo: Building these habits early also helps these kids grow up into adults who model less wasteful behavior.

Will Malloy: The program helps schools create stations to collect uneaten food that can be given away instead of thrown out.

Megan Hall: Where does that food go?

Will Malloy: Kendra Gay, one of the facilitators for the program, says it can go to a lot of different places.

Kendra Gay: It might be to students that are identified as needing more food, or backpack programs after or even to pantries.

Christine Okulo: Backpack programs send kids home with food, especially for weekends and school breaks.

Will Malloy: That can make a big difference for kids who don’t have enough to eat at home. And there are a lot of them, nearly 40% of Rhode Island households with children can’t afford enough food to eat.

Megan Hall: Does this program work?

Christine Okulo: Warren says that, so far, the program has had a big impact on the amount of waste schools send to landfills.

Warren Heyman: Before we set up our program, the schools that we’re in were generating about 170 tons of waste. Thanks to our program, they’re producing 22.1 tons. So that’s an 87% reduction.

Will Malloy: But the School Recycling Project hopes to do more than just limit the amount of waste schools throw away, they want to reduce the amount of food those schools order in the first place.

Christine Okulo: Co-Director Jim Corwin says participating schools are seeing that happen, too:

Jim Corwin: With the food waste per student going down, our food service providers tell us that they’ve changed their ordering. So we are pushing back on that supply chain, which is really important.

Megan Hall: Cool. So, can other places learn from what these schools are doing?

Will Malloy: Absolutely. A lot of these food waste strategies can be used in any location that serves food. And some places are already encouraging those types of changes.

Megan Hall: Like where?

Christine Okulo: A lot of states are creating laws that encourage, or even require, composting at large scales.

Will Malloy: Here in Rhode Island, businesses that create a lot of food waste are now legally required to keep that waste out of landfills. Composting is one of the main ways that businesses can take care of that requirement.

Christine Okulo: And any place can give away uneaten but safe-to-eat food.

Will Malloy: There’s even a federal law that protects businesses from getting sued when they donate their food.

Christine Okulo: So, this program in schools has a lot to teach all of us about long-term, effective solutions to cutting food waste.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Will and Christine!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

The post How can schools fight food waste?  appeared first on TPR: The Public’s Radio.

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