New Initiative Aims To Reduce Food Waste In Indiana

An estimated 35 million tons of food is discarded each year in the U.S., equaling $165 billion in food waste, according to the Indiana Recycling Coalition.

A new program called the Indiana Food Scrap Initiative launched this week, a product of the Indiana Recycling Coalition.

The program will work with organizations that generate a lot of food waste, like grocery stores, and help them find resources for composting the food.

Indiana Recycling Coalition executive director Carey Hamilton says they hope working on a larger scale will eventually inspire individuals to participate as well.

“As we see more and more interest from local governments, we think that they will be the ones to use the resources that we create through the initiative to go out into their communities and educate about different ways to reduce food waste,” Hamilton says.

The program will also work with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to make state regulations supportive of composting.

Hamilton says Indiana has a long way to go.

“You have to have a place to take the material that is set up properly and regulated to handle that material and turn it into compost in a safe and effective way, and today there are not enough of those locations across the state,” she says.