Speaker: Joe Richardson, Fredrick, Maryland, USA
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Joe Richardson: My name is Joe Richardson. I live in Frederick Maryland. Several years ago. I had the opportunity to go to National Geographic Society and listen to Catherine Wilkinson. Talk about climate solutions to a project drawdown. Since then, I started an organization where we recover um edible food from school cafeterias. We also have a program that composts organics recycles, decontaminates recycling, um removes liquids from the waste stream and we can reduce cafeteria waste by 85%. Most importantly, we're, we've determined in my associations with other organizations around the country that on average, an elementary school can throw away as much as 50 pounds of school of perfectly edible food in the trash daily milks yogurts, uh unopened untouched fruit, unopened packages of carrots, all that's going in the trash when it needs to be recovered and shared with students. The simple solution is put a mini refrigerator in a cafeteria to be part of a share table that preserves perishable food, keeps the cold milk cold and we can recover as much as 50 pounds of edible food daily from the school when you multiply that by 100 and 80 days in the school year schools are throwing away as much as five tons of perfectly edible food in the trash every year. When you multiply that by 98,000 schools, we're talking about over 800 million pounds of perfectly edible food that's being wasted. When another child may want a second milk or another apple and what's left over at the shared table can be shared with the community. This is an effort that absolutely must start nationwide and can't start soon enough.
