Tips for Food Waste Prevention: A Conversation with Joelle Ciriacy

In our latest podcast episode, Joelle Ciriacy, Environmental Scientist at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, shares tips for preventing food waste.   
From being proactive with meal planning and shopping lists, to leveraging the pantry and freezer, Joelle makes practical suggestions for easy ways to eliminate food waste in the household.

Learn more about National Food Waste Prevention Week in the U.S. here

Discover Food Smart Tennessee Resources such as the meal planning sheet here

Check out the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's website

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Transcript

Opening

Welcome to SolPods studio. We're not your average social network. We're a community of professionals, enthusiasts and students taking sustainability to the next level. Join us on our journey and get inspired by Earth heroes just like you.

Cassie: 00:18

Welcome back to another episode of Soul pod studio. I'm Cassie Freyeisen based in the Nashville area, and I'm joined here today with Joelle seriousIy environmental scientists at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, where she is leading the get food smart Tennessee program. We're here to chat about a massive problem facing us all food waste, but don't worry. And under 15 minutes, we're going to empower you with actionable tips on how to prevent food waste at home. And on the go. Joelle thanks so much for being here today. And I'm so excited that you're gonna help us all get food smart.

Joelle: 00:51

Hi, Cassie, thank you so much for having me.

Cassie: 00:53

Thank you. And I understand Joellel, this is going to be the third annual celebration of food waste Prevention Week, which is going to be taking place April 1st through April 7th. Can you tell us a little bit about what your team and department has planned for the event? 

Joelle: 01:10

Yeah, we're really excited for this year's food waste Prevention Week. We have events all over the state planned that are in person, in Nashville in Memphis and in Chattanooga. But we also have lots of online engagement happening that we'll be sharing to our social media. So we're really excited to see y'all out there. 

Cassie 01:30

Awesome. So Joelle from, you know, some of my research so far, I've seen that households are by far the largest contributor to America's food waste problem. What would you say are some of the main drivers behind this large scale waste happening here in the United States?

Joelle: 01:46

Yeah, I mean, what a good question, folks have been trying to answer that for quite a few years. I think that some of that is a culture of consumption, I do think that in the US, we do tend to consume and buy more, rather than trying to figure out how to make the best of what we already have. I also do think that it might be some something to do with how busy we all are. We have really fast paced lives and some of this does require some reflective thought on what are you going to cook for tonight? And how's that going to use up what's in the fridge? So I think those are two factors.

Cassie: 02:21

Yeah, absolutely. We see this, you know - our days are packed with school work, volunteering, you know, after school extra-curricular activities. So we're always trying to cram so much into our days. And just try and be mindful and think about things upfront, maybe once a week, you really do take the time to think about your food and incorporating that into your practices can really go a long way. So now I would love to ask you, what are your five quick and easy tips for individuals to really incorporate into their day to help them reduce food waste.

Joelle: 02:57

So yeah, I think the first thing that kind of goes right off of what you were saying is to plan out your meals. So on our website, there's actually a sheet that you can follow or you can just do this on a sheet of paper or on your phone. But write out the meals that you think you'll actually eat at home that week. And be realistic, you might be too tired to cook dinner one night and you're gonna go out. So don't try to plan a meal every single night maybe. But plan out your meals and then write down what you're going to need to make those meals and shop your pantry first. That's number two; meal plan and then shop your pantry first because you might already have some ingredients at home. And you don't want to buy them twice, one because you don't want them to go bad and waste money and two, you don't want them to go to waste at all. So that's number two. Number three is when you go to the store. Now this one can be tough, especially if you have kids in tow. But research suggests that if you stick to your shopping list, you will waste less food. So try to actually make an inclusive shopping list. That's actually what you need, not your idealized version, but what you actually need. And try to stick to that as much as you can. That's number three, right? Okay. Number four is I love to use my freezer, I definitely suggest that folks use their freezer to the max when trying to reduce food so so you have a bag of spinach that you've had around for a few days. You don't want it to go to waste but you're not really sure when you're going to have time to make that. So take it put it on a pan in the freezer, let it freeze flat and then put it in a freezer bag and store it for when you do have time to use that maybe in a pasta in a smoothie, something like that. It's number four. And then number five if you have excess, maybe invite people over to come eat your leftovers. with you, or if you have lots of Christmas cookies, go take them to friends that you haven't seen in a little a little while, you know, find creative ways to get food to other people, if you have a neighbor that could use some company that could use little extra food, take your food over to your neighbor and go chat for a little bit.

Cassie: 05:20

Absolutely, and what you said around leftovers, you know, something that we learned from the zero waste chef is that you can take those leftovers and create a whole new meal with that. So sometimes just thinking creatively and outside of the box, like maybe you have leftovers that you haven't used, maybe haven't cooked them yet, but those were the ingredients for that other recipe, use those then develop another meal from that. So we got that idea from her. I've been using that a lot lately. And then obviously, for me, a big thing is making sure that whatever we don't eat, which is very little, because my husband loves all the leftovers, so that's awesome. But whatever we don't use, or what we don't eat, we compost. So that's a huge for me a big tip as well, as you know, the last resort should then be composting, the rest of what's left. So that way, it doesn't make its way into landfill. But I really love these tips. I feel like if if people could just be, you know, a little bit more mindful from the start of the week, or maybe on Sunday, you really take that into account, I think we could all probably do a better job collectively. So thank you for these. So now that we covered the individual, you know, what if a small business was looking to develop a waste management plan, where would you suggest they start? Let's take a small business or a small nonprofit, for example, where should they start?

Joelle: 06:42

Yeah, I think that the starting spot for small business or even a large business is a waste audit. So looking at your trash and thinking, where's most of our waste coming from? Why do we have this waste? And what can we do to start changing that, start reducing that a little bit? There's a local business near me, where they have only reusable towels in their bathroom, and they just wash those all the time. And it works fine. So just look at what you're throwing out and think what are some creative solutions that we can we can implement to reduce that waste? 

Cassie: 07:18

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, like you said, with the audit, checking in with all those different stakeholders in the organization is really important. Because maybe, you know, maybe you are working from home a lot, but maybe your other colleagues are in the office. So just having a sounding board of what everyone's doing collectively is also a really good idea. So that way, you might not be you know, maybe if you're developing the plan, you might not know what what's actually entailed for other people's roles, because we all have different roles, responsibilities, and some of us are going to, it's going to lead ourselves to have more waste. So how can we work together to minimize that, you know, as a group, so I think communication is really important there as well and setting tangible goals. So that way, maybe, you know, you're not going to change something overnight. But if you can set small, mini monthly or quarterly goals, then you'll see that progress add up.

Joelle: 08:07

Yeah, I think that is so huge. The communication and setting reasonable goals, because if you don't know what's happening in another department or another employee, you don't know what's reasonable for them to incorporate, and things are only going to happen when they're achievable, they're reasonable. So yeah, communication is definitely key. You're totally right.

Cassie: 08:28

From my research, I've also seen that families are throwing out approximately 25% of the food and beverages that they actually buy. How can we advocate for smart shopping and responsible consuming habits? What can we actually tell to people when they're going to the store? What would give them you know, an idea and inspiration?

Joelle: 08:50

That's a sticky question, because I think that most people ideally don't want to waste their food, because there's some different numbers out here on this, but kind of the the media number I see reported is that family of four in a year, waste $1,600 on food that's eventually thrown out. And that can be pretty significant for a lot of folks. So I think that first of all, thinking about that money and thinking about what you would like to do with money or what you could do with that money could be helpful. But I also think planning ahead and splitting up the task in the home could be really helpful as well, because if there's just one person who's really overextended that's doing that, that can be a lot on them to also think about the list and what are we going to eat for the week? And how do I make sure that we stick to the list? So splitting that up as a team, if you live with roommates, if you live in a family that could be huge and also just just being realistic about what you actually like to eat because. For example, I just bought a bag of radishes a couple of weeks ago. And they've sat in the bottom of my fridge for a little while because I think I like to eat radishes. But then when it comes to it, I don't eat a lot of radishes. And so being realistic about what you're actually going to eat, and that you're going to be able to eat it in enough time before it goes bad is possibly a good thing to help change that habit.

Cassie: 10:29

That's a great tip that you gave. And another thing that my husband and I do, like you said, splitting the responsibilities. So we have an app on our phone. I don't remember the name of it right now. But it's Any List, and we write our what the necessities are right there. And when we're at the store, we can both check it off. So I see exactly real time, what he's removing from the list. So that way, I know I don't need to buy that. And we won't, we won't have double the waste. Because, you know, one of us was buying some that we did not need or not need to use in that week, and that tool has been really helpful for him and I, and it's free. So, you know, check that out. But it's so helpful, because we know exactly what we need to help make that you know that for that full week of meals. And we can keep a running list too. You can, you know, just add to it, and you can cross it off. But you can also see what you've checked off. So it's really helpful. So incorporating, you know, tools on your cell phone that other people can see would be a good way to achieve that collectively and as a group as well,

Joelle: 11:33

That's a great idea. Something that I do because I'm shopping just for myself is I keep a note on my phone, that's a checklist of as I run out of things, I add it to the list. And then before I go shopping, I check what I already have before I add anything. And that's a really cool app, I'm gonna have to check that out, though.

Cassie: 11:53

He found it, I can't take credit for it. But it has been very helpful. And I also use it for my own organization too. So you can put it all there so well, grocery shopping. But then also what do I need to prioritize for Solpods? What do I need to prioritize? You know, being a mom, so I have all my lists and my, my different roles and responsibilities broken out. So it does really help me stay organized.

Joelle: 12:15

That's awesome.

Cassie:12:17

Thank you. So what are some of the local events here in Tennessee that people could participate in? To really learn more about waste management and waste reduction?

Joelle: 12:26

Awesome. Yeah. So when we have events like food waste Prevention Week, we do post that getfoodsmart tn.com. That's the website of the program that I run. But if you also check out TDEC's website, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the thing that there's a whole events page, there's lots of events that happen around sustainability in our state parks now, which is really, really cool there being some awesome leaders in our state parks. So I would definitely check out that as well. And I also feel like SolPods is a good place to hear about things that are happening in Tennessee as well in your your individual pods.

Cassie: 13:08

Thank you. Yes. And we also have our helping hands throughout other cities that would have, you know, local events that are going on around food waste. So definitely check that out and find your local city. And what are other ways people across the United States could get involved in this week long event? Joelle, what do you think? 

Joelle: 13:27

So if you don't live in Tennessee, or even if you do, check out foodwastepreventionweek.com. And there's a really beautiful, wonderful website that has events that are happening across the US. And I think even across the world, there's a few and other countries. There's also webinars that are happening all throughout the week. And so regardless of where you are, or how much time you have, you can register for a webinar, if you can't tune in, they will probably send out a registration link afterwards as well. So those are some great things. There's also a recipe challenge or not recipe challenge, cooking challenge, a cooking challenge that's happening this week too, I believe, April 9, where you can tell you fill out this form and you tell the food waste prevention week, folks, I made this because I had this thing sitting in my fridge for a while. So I used radishes and make a recipe with that. You don't have to write out a recipe. You don't have to be using a recipe if you don't want to. You don't even have to take pictures if you don't want to just tell them how you were thinking mindfully about using things you've had sitting around. That's a really fun way to engage.

Cassie: 14:38

I love that. Do they have that on the main website on the food waste prevention website?

Joelle: 14:43

They do. Yes.

Cassie:  14:45

Okay, perfect. We'll drop that link in our show notes too. So you all can access that. Awesome. So for my last question today, Joelle, we asked all of our guests if you had one sustainability superpower, what would it be and why?

Joelle: 14:58

So I've been asked this question before, and I learned that I am far more direct than the average person because I just said that I would like to return CO2 levels in the climate to pre-industrialized levels. I do think that that would solve a lot of our problems. However, that wouldn't be a sustainable change if we didn't all actually care about keeping those CO2 levels at pre-industrialized levels. And so I, my secondary answer is I would really love to help people care about the world around them and the people around them as well.

Cassie: 15:41

So give them more empathy, to care about the environment to care about our planet, so they can, you know, make the change for future generations. Give them that feeling that you and I have, and hopefully others have, but sometimes it just takes a little bit more of you know, exploring that with people. I love that. So thank Joelle so much for being here today. We learned a lot around food waste, and I hope that everyone can take a couple of these tips into their day incorporate it, you know, to become you know, a little bit better for for yourself, but you know, for for the earth as well. And we will be providing you with some links, what Joelle mentioned, but check out food waste prevention week, April 1 through April 7, and see how you can really make an impact. So thank you so much again, Joelle and have a great rest of your day. 

Joelle: 16:27

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Closing: 16:32

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