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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?

  • Each one of us will throw away about 21 pounds of food this month alone.

  • That means students in your school are throwing away hundreds of pounds of food each day.

  • The impact of food waste on our community, our economy, and our environment is staggering.

  • We process 800 tons of solid waste here at this facility every single day.

  • We burn it, and we recover energy from it.

  • In Eastern Washington, 33% of everything that goes in the garbage could have been composted.

  • Half of that was food.

  • Wet food doesn't burn.

  • Even if it did go to a landfill instead, it's going to generate methane gas, which is a very potent greenhouse gas emission.

  • There's no good way of dealing with garbage except not to make it.

  • 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.

  • And it adds up to a complete meal for someone.

  • 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.

  • That's a big number, one in five; that could be someone sitting right next to you in class.

  • In a 2016 survey, 77% of Americans said that they feel guilty when throwing food away.

  • Who needs guilt? Just take what you'll eat, and eat what you take.

  • It will ease your conscience and make an actual difference.

  • We want children to look at food and understand what a valuable resource that is.

  • 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.

  • If every student did their part to waste less, it would make a real impact.

  • At my school, I'm curbing food waste by recovering food that students would otherwise throw away and donating it to students in need.

  • Since November, we've recovered 215 pounds of food, which is equivalent to 168 meals fed to students in need.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Want to make an actual impact on your school, home, community, and world?

  • Feed your body, not the trash can.

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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