RESOURCES
Below are tips on pumpkin decorating and links to other organizations with tips to reduce food waste in YOUR kitchen. We’d love to hear about your creative solutions so we can share them with the community. Share with us!
Pumpkin Decorating Tips
Whether you carve or decorate, there are lots of ways ensure your pumpkins, gourds, and other squash can still be donated to livestock and resuced animals in your community. Here are just a few simple tips so your pumpkin is still edible and ready to go to a donation site for feed.
- Use water-based paints, markers, and glues.
- Try tissue paper, dried flowers, and other organic/editable materials.
- Use 1 part vinegar to 10 parts water to preserve carved pumpkins.
Have other ideas?
We would love to have you submit your creative ideas through our Contact Us form.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Below are organizations that can help you reduce food waste in your kitchen everyday.
Zero Waste in DC helps individuals and organizations do the easy things that have a real impact in addressing the climate and waste crises through workshops, presentations, and consultations. Visit their website, Instagram, and Facebook for practical and actionable ideas that you can easily incorporate into your daily life, including reducing your food waste and slashing single-use plastics. You don’t have to live in DC to benefit!
EatOrToss features images of food items that might give some people pause (i.e. dark circles on an avocado, a sprouted sweet potato, just one moldy berry). Articles, written after interviews with scientists and reviews of authoritative sources, explain the science behind the scenario, and provide guidance on whether they’re OK to eat. EatOrToss also features food-waste-fighting recipes and date label explanations. The goal is more peace of mind and less wasted food.
Anne-Marie went plastic-free in 2011, with her daughter blogging the progress. Zero waste was the next logical step. Her website has lots of recipes to make the most of your pantry (sourdough bread, anyone?) and even includes cleaners, deodorants, soaps, glues, and reusable produce bags. Check out her book The Zero Waste Chef for more ideas!
Looking for ways to save money on food and make it go farther? Visit Buy Salvage Food for tips on shopping at salvage grocery stores, finding participating grocers, reading date labels, reducing food waste in your kitchen (including recipes), and many more food waste prevention ideas!
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has a vision of thriving, diverse, equitable communities. For 50 years, ILSR has worked on waste and recycling issues. ILSR’s Composting for Community Initiative is advancing composting to enhance local soils and community health, support local food production, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions, cut waste, and create community development opportunities. ILSR shares model programs and policies and their lessons learned to accelerate growth. They facilitate and lead a national Community Composter Coalition and support this expanding network by providing workshops, policy guides, best management practices, outreach materials, webinars, networking opportunities, training, and more.
Master Gardener organizations across the country have programs to direct excess backyard produce to food banks in the communities in which they operate. Find the local Master Gardener near you for more information.
LEARN MORE
Food loss and waste is a global problem with an estimated 40% of all food lost (in the supply chain from picking to the store) or wasted (uneaten and thrown away). In the US, that food is worth $470+ billion. Bread is the most wasted food, globally. Perhaps most surprising is that we waste food equally despite economic circumstance. Imagine that the resources required to produce that food — farm labor to tend and harvest, water to grow, and fuels to transport — are also wasted. 24% of landfill municipal waste is food, which, when it breaks down, produces methane and carbon dioxide. It is a solvable problem if we each do our part. Learn more about food waste and the programs to reduce it from the links below as we work to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030.
Food Product Dates are stamped on our food—from fresh produce to dry goods—but do any of us really know how to interpret them? What is the difference between a ‘use by’ date and a ‘best by’ date? Is the flavor degraded, or is there a genuine health risk from eating products past those dates? Learn how to interpret those dates and extend the life of food in your pantry and know what is okay to give away and what needs to be composted.
The U.S. Food Waste Pact is a national voluntary agreement to help food businesses accelerate progress toward their waste reduction targets. It’s designed to go beyond just commitment-setting to driving meaningful action – through pre-competitive collaboration and data-driven strategy across the supply chain. Led by national nonprofit partners ReFED and World Wildlife Fund, the U.S. Food Waste Pact is aligned around the global framework of “Target, Measure, Act” to help food businesses reduce waste within their operations.
Announced in June 2024, the goal of the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics is to prevent the loss and waste of food and increase recycling of food and other organic materials, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save households and businesses money, and build cleaner, healthier communities. The four main objectives of the strategy are to prevent food loss, prevent food waste, increase the recycling rate for all organic waste, and support policies that incentivize and encourage the prevention of food loss and waste and organics recycling.
Food loss and waste is a global challenge. Globally, around 13.2 percent of food produced is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 19 percent of total global food production is wasted in households, in the food service and in retail all together. Learn more and plan to participate in the next World Food Day on October 16, 2024.
Mailing Address
P. O. Box 1096
Leesburg, VA 20177-1096