How ‘green teams’ help 3 California farms reduce waste by 2025
With new rules about organic food waste on farms coming up in California, growers need all the help they can get. Learn about one resource for this effort. The rules could come to a farm near you.
In this partnered episode of the "Tip of the Iceberg" podcast with Equitable Food Initiative, learn about an innovative approach to increasing sustainability on farms from special guest Lilian Autler, EFI’s organizational and workforce development manager.
Autler led a project that placed multidisciplinary teams on three different California farms to address waste management — something that helps meet the state’s newer bill (S. 1383) that requires organic waste reduction by 2025.
Jeff Madu from Windset Farms was thrilled with the results, and Autler quotes him in her interview, saying that every business should get started because there are financial savings to be found, after his company saw net profits from improving its cardboard recycling program.
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Another highlight was how the teams began: They spent a day digging through the trash to establish their priorities. These teams were resistant at first, but then they were convinced when they saw how much and what items were going to the landfill that could have been recycled.
They did it a second time at the end of the project to measure their improvements.
