Food Waste

Food should be a resource not a waste.

Food waste is a complicated issue that has far reaching ramifications including societal strain, environmental degradation, and financial burdens. The IWRC has been providing food waste prevention and reduction services since 2013 and can help reduce your bottom line, decrease your environmental footprint, and walk you through many strategies that work to divert food waste from the landfill. We also provide training and support while implementing food waste initiatives including composting, donation, tracking and analyses, and partnership building that increase local diversion opportunities. Food waste diversion is in our wheel house and we can help. Just give us a call or send us an email.

Food Waste in Rural Schools Whitepaper

We have released a new whitepaper detailing food waste at K-12 schools in rural Iowa. The whitepaper analyzes data we've collected over the last five years of providing direct assistance to K-12 schools across the state in the fight against food waste.

According to the data, we estimate that K-12 students in Iowa tossed over 150,000 pounds of food and beverage waste every school day during breakfast and lunch in the 2018-2019 school year. Moreover, Iowa’s K-12 students tossed nearly 30 million pounds of food and beverage waste in 2018-2019 (based on 180 day school year) with the majority of this ending up in the landfill.

Click the thumbnail below to download the the full whitepaper: