GRAND RAPIDS, MICH — According to the state of Michigan, one pound of food per person ends up in a landfill each year, and with a population of over 10 million that adds up.
The Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy estimates that food waste costs the average Michigan family around $18,000 each year. And just as big a problem is that waste also breaks down, which is an issue with more trash per person buried in Michigan than any other state in the country.
"When you think about how many tons of food waste are going to landfills, they are generating methane because they're in an anaerobic environment, which is where hydrogen sulfide and methane like to develop, and then that's getting out into the atmosphere," Organic Program Coordinator with EGLE, Aaron Hiday told FOX17.
That is something that EGLE is looking to slow down.
"Eat your food, don't produce the food waste in the first place," Aaron said. "Then right below that is feed hungry people. You know, if you have things in your pantry that you know, it's been in there a while. But you know, canned goods that may be past their Best Buy date, but they're still good to donate, and there's hungry people that need it.:"
After that - Aaron recommends finding a way to turn food waste into animal feed, composting, or even as a potential energy source.
“An easy target is to divert do organics away from the landfills you know, figure out something better get them back into, you know, the carbon cycle and the food chain as quickly as possible, because then they're not, you know, contributing to climate change either. So it's a huge part of the story.
It’s also a huge part of Natural Choice Foods’ story.
Since 2019 the West Michigan business has been preventing food waste in a fresh way.
"We buy and sell short-dated food from major food vendors across the US. The other way that the biggest growing area of our company is our repackaging facility, where we take private label brands, we badge them, and have them inspected by the USDA or FDA," Natural Choice Foods Director of Sales Kimberly Jones told us. "And then we repackage them out under our own private label brands and put them back out into the secondary market, mainly our five stores daily deals food outlet.
With the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimating one-third of all food produced annually goes to waste – doing things like Natural Choice Foods is a good way to make a dent.
"I can confidently say we have repackaged over 100 million pounds of food since 2019," said Jones.
And keeping that food out of the landfill and getting it back to people is the ultimate goal and something you don’t need a business to do.
"When it comes to your store-bought canned goods, dry goods, like cereals, and bread and things like that, if they're just beyond their date," said Hiday. "So it's one of those things where as long as the packaging is still good, there's a good chance that it's still okay to donate."
