Sustainable Oxford and the Mississippi Sustainable Agriculture Network will have two tents set up on the Square during Saturday’s Double Decker Festival in an effort to reduce and reuse food wastes.
The tents will be located at the intersection of South Lamar and Jackson Avenue. One tent will serve as an educational, interactive tent for kids. At the other, volunteers will be taking food waste that would otherwise go into the garbage, loading it into large yellow recycling bins and loading the full bags onto a truck to be driven to local farms at the end of the day.
“This is the first time anyone has done something like this for Double Decker,” Shannon Curtis, the project coordinator with Sustainable Oxford, said. “We wanted to collect food waste to show how much is wasted by consumers but also to donate to local farmers so it doesn’t go wasted. We’ll also have info about our organization. We aren’t just collecting food, we’re telling people why.”
Curtis said that food waste isn’t just the food left over on someone’s plate, and it causes a bigger problem than most might realize.
“Food waste refers to things like food that’s at grocery stores after the sell-by date or food ruined in transportation on trucks coming from farms, not just what’s left on your plate,” Curtis said. “Food waste is the largest component of landfills in the United States. It’s organic and breaking down other organic material in the landfill with it.”
Curtis said that the organic decomposition that takes place in landfills creates the greenhouse gas methane, which contributes to landfills being one of the top sources of greenhouse gases in the United States.
“We’re trying to show people how we can help reduce that just by showing them how much waste we collect on this one day,” Curtis said.
Ellen Olack, the Americorps VISTA at the Ole Miss Office of Sustainability, also hopes that bringing food composting to Double Decker will help to challenge a common misconception people might have about composting.
“I often hear concerns expressed about composting being ‘smelly’ or ‘unsightly,’” Olack said. “I disagree. I honestly don’t see how a garbage can or dumpster is preferable. Hopefully having compost at such a well attended event will challenge these misconceptions.”
Olack said that Sustainable Oxford and the Ole Miss Office of Sustainability have a strong working relationship because they are able to focus their efforts on both the campus and the town. Two employees of the Office of Sustainability also work with Sustainable Oxford.
Curtis said they have about 15 volunteers signed up for Double Decker who will be helping to move bags of compost from bins to trucks, but there’s always room for more.
“We’re still trying to recruit everyone we can, we want to have as many as possible,” Curtis said. “The more the merrier.”
