Good afternoon friends of Care and Share!

According to a National Geographic article entitled One-Third of Food Is Lost or Wasted: What Can Be Done, “from our farms to grocery stores to dinner tables, 30 percent of the food we grow is never eaten.” What does that translate to? The USDA has found that we waste 141 trillion calories worth of food, or 1,249 calories per capita per day! As the graph below illustrates, this number has risen substantially over the years.

As a food bank that distributes millions of pounds of food each year, we have chosen to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

As many of you may know, we have a very special recycling program at Care and Share. Not only do we recycle plastic wrap, cardboard, and pallets, but we also recycle food. Sometimes we get donated food items that we cannot safely distribute to our partner agencies because of damaged packaging, expiration dates, or recalls. We could easily throw this food in our dumpster, where it would eventually end up in a landfill, but instead, this food gets processed for use as animal feed and compost for local farmers.

Dylan and Dakota, our Recycle Program Assistants, are integral to our recycling efforts. These young men have spent countless hours as volunteers processing food waste and turning it into a source of nutrition for animals and plants. We recently welcomed them to our team as part-time staff members.

With the help of Dylan and Dakota; the leadership of Randy Burger, our Recycling Coordinator; the guidance of Future Pointe, a waste reuse company; and the support of the Carl George Bjorkman Foundation, we’ve been perfecting our recycling program and plan to expand this model into a full fledged business in the near future. GOALZERO Recycling will be a for-profit entity that will help fuel the mission of Care and Share.