According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture , food waste is estimated at between 30% to 40% of the food supply, or about 133 billion pounds, which was $161 billion worth of food in 2010.
Local organization Fertile Ground Cooperative, 2228 S Santa Fe Ave., is hoping to help Oklahoma City area residents significantly curb the amount of food waste that ends up in landfills locally, through a grant funded pilot-program of the USDA and National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The Compost and Food Waste Reduction Grant was awarded to the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments, which then turned to local organization Fertile Ground for implementation.
“Our goal for the grant program is to try to make composting food scraps accessible to people, to try to get it out there in front of people and make sure people know that there are options for recycling food waste,” said Terry Craghead, founder of Fertile Ground. “This is a two-year pilot program, so we’ve got funding for two years and the funding partially pays for a new truck and a driver, infrastructure here to improve our composting facility, but then also for the bins and the signage and the marketing of the program.”