Once upon a time, there was this little girl named Ella Kilpatrick Kotner who used to run around the fields of an organic lettuce farm in Kealakekua, Hawai‘i. She basically grew up surrounded by leafy greens and compost piles. Talk about a unique childhood, right?
Fast forward to today, and she’s all about community and connecting people to food and soil through composting. She’s now leading a program at Groundwork RI in Providence, Rhode Island, where her team goes around the city on bikes collecting food scraps from households. They then take these scraps to a community garden, mix them with other materials, and turn them into compost that people can use for their gardens or urban farms.
The U.S. has a big problem with food waste, with about one-third of the country’s food supply going to waste. This contributes a lot to greenhouse gas emissions, which is not great for the environment. A while back, there was a goal to cut food waste in half by 2030, and even though some people thought the Trump administration would ditch that goal, they actually doubled down on it.
Unfortunately, without any real enforcement, the goal has been hard to reach. People in the U.S. still waste a lot of food every year. Trump’s main concern was more about the economic impact of food waste rather than the environmental side of things.
Now, fast forward to 2023, and the EPA launched the Community Change Grants Program to support organizations working on environmental justice challenges. Groundwork RI was lucky enough to be one of the organizations to receive a grant to expand their composting services and make a positive impact on the community.
However, things took a turn when the grant was suddenly terminated by the EPA. This left a lot of people feeling disappointed and frustrated, especially since the project had the potential to create jobs, divert tons of food waste from landfills, and help people in need. It’s a real shame to see all that hard work go to waste.
But hey, life goes on, right? Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to, but we just have to keep pushing forward. Who knows what the future holds? Maybe there’s still a chance to make a difference, even if it means starting from scratch. One thing’s for sure, though – the fight against food waste is far from over.
