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Did you know that as much as 40% of food produced in the US ends up here at a solid waste facility?
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Each one of us will throw away about 21 pounds of food this month alone.
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That means students in your school are throwing away hundreds of pounds of food each day.
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The impact of food waste on our community, our economy, and our environment is staggering.
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We process 800 tons of solid waste here at this facility every single day.
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We burn it, and we recover energy from it.
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In Eastern Washington, 33% of everything that goes in the garbage could have been composted.
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Half of that was food.
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Wet food doesn't burn.
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Even if it did go to a landfill instead, it's going to generate methane gas, which is a very potent greenhouse gas emission.
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There's no good way of dealing with garbage except not to make it.
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I think if we all just took a moment and looked at what we waste, you'd be surprised at what it adds up to.
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And it adds up to a complete meal for someone.
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One in five children in our region is food insecure, and what that means is, they don't know where their next meal will come from.
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That's a big number, one in five; that could be someone sitting right next to you in class.
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In a 2016 survey, 77% of Americans said that they feel guilty when throwing food away.
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Who needs guilt? Just take what you'll eat, and eat what you take.
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It will ease your conscience and make an actual difference.
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We want children to look at food and understand what a valuable resource that is.
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Be aware of what you consume, and then keep in the back of your mind a vision of someone in need that could use that food that you're wasting.
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If every student did their part to waste less, it would make a real impact.
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At my school, I'm curbing food waste by recovering food that students would otherwise throw away and donating it to students in need.
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Since November, we've recovered 215 pounds of food, which is equivalent to 168 meals fed to students in need.
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Our number one mission is to feed people in need, and if we're rescuing food that would be wasted anyway, that's just a bonus.
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If there are ways that we can reduce, reuse, recycle, and make less waste to begin with, then we don't have to worry about trying to deal with it here.
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Want to make an actual impact on your school, home, community, and world?
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Feed your body, not the trash can.