Sustainable Management of Food

Resource

Sustainable Management of Food

Graphic of the U.S. EPA's Food Recovery Hierarchy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s work to promote innovation and highlight the value and management of food as an asset is featured in this educational resource. Building on the concept of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," this resource highlights the impacts of the food we waste in the US.  The site is broken into simple sections on: Understanding the Issues; What Businesses, Institutions, and Other Organizations Can Do; and What Individuals Can Do.  A highlight of the last section is the Food: Too Good to Waste Implementation Guide and Toolkit which is designed to teach local governments and community organizations how to implement a Food: Too Good to Waste campaign in their community.

This resource provides a great foundation to explore the issues surrounding food waste in the US. Particularly, educators can obtain a policy point-of-view to incorporate into lesson plans, as well as a proposed hierarchy that many organizations use in real time to manage food to prevent waste and the best practices to manage waste on different scales. Interactive portions of this website can allow students to explore excess food opportunities in the US, including potential generators and recipients of excess food and how excess food can be used to reduce hunger in the US.