What specific activities are your local schools, businesses, and communities participating in that most successfully support sustainable food management practices (such as reducing the amount of food produced, donating excess food to food banks, composting, etc.)? How can EPA contribute?
2011 November 3
As America Recycles Day approaches (November 15), EPA would like to know what local communities are doing to conserve resources. Not only focusing on the three R’s (reduce, reuse and recycle), but composting, diverting materials from landfills through donation or other efforts.
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Philadelphia has planted 27 orchards (Philadelphia Orchard Project) http://phillyorchards.org and has several urban farms (Philadelphia Urban Farm Network).
Activities include:
-Providing funding through RIDEM’s open space program to urban land trusts working to increase food production in the city
-Working with DOA on alternative master price agreements for products that local farmers/fishermen are able to grow/source in state
-Developing a inter-agency policy about healthy foods at meetings which emphasizes both locally grown and healthy products
-Convene and participate in marketing initiatives for both seafood and farm products in addition to being a resource for food security reports and presentations
There are several other examples that do not directly involve RIDEM, and we as a state agency are actively trying to better support our agricultural sector. EPA could be helpful by convening a call focused on what states are doing both legislatively and cross-agency to better support farmers and fishermen.
Three schools in the David Douglas School District in Portland, Oregon compost all food waste in their cafeteria and kitchen. This food is taken to a local facility where it is turned into compost and sold back to local nurseries and residents. Other schools in the district have worm bins that turn vegetable and fruit scraps into compost that is used in the school’s gardens.
My community (Berkeley) participates in the International Transition movement (please see the following website: http://www.transitionberkeley.com/), which sponsors a crop exchange among local residents every Monday evening.
Transition Toronto’s award winning film “The People in my Neighbourhood” (http://transitionculture.org/2011/10/07/transition- torontos-winning-film-the-people-in-my-neighbourhood/)
has many terrific ideas for sustainable living, tax policies, etc.
The City of Berkeley provides free composting bins to residents, and collects almost everything else as compostable materials (including meat, dairy, egg shells, bones), recyclables (plastics, paper, glass, metals), or green waste (garden cuttings).
The EPA can help by expanding programs like the West Oakland Lead Treatment Project that is reducing the bioavailability of lead in soil by converting it to pyro-morphite using apatite (fish bones). The restoration being requested by many residents in this pilot program includes planter boxes that they use for urban farming.
One of the most successful and popular programs is local farmer’s markets. EPA might promote local farmer’s markets by granting funds for permanent locations or reducing regulations for operation.
Increasing the capacity of the sewers in towns and cities would allow all organic waste to be safely recycled. However in London we have victorian sewers and it would need a massive reconstruction project to upgrade the sewers here. I happen to live next door to a ‘recycling centre’ and I’m horrified to see what people deem as rubbish. In South America the street children live by what they find on rubbish tips – here one could make a good living by reselling the disguarded items on ebay,