The holiday season is always an opportunity to highlight the negative impacts of wasted food on our wallets, our environment, and our communities. There are many tips and tricks to consider while preparing and enjoying holiday meals, such as carefully planning portions, repurposing or freezing leftovers, and finding food donation options.
Minimizing wasted food and then composting peels, trimmings and plate scrapings are good habits all year round. While some people may live in a town or city with a food scraps collection program and some may be home composters, for the majority of us, there is not a system in place to ensure efficiency and ease in diverting food scraps to composting.
Centralized composting infrastructure in New Jersey is one of the critical missing components of the food system. At Vivaria, we’re focused on developing these facilities as a long-term solution to manage the state’s organic waste. Food scrap composting generates a valuable soil amendment that enriches agricultural soils, which will, in turn, produce abundance for holiday seasons to come.