By Brandon Hearn

More than 50 million tons of food is thrown away each year in the United States. Food waste makes up roughly 25% of the nation’s trash.

If you want to help eliminate food waste, you can donate usable food to friends, family and pantries. You can plan your meals to avoid buying too much food. And, lastly, you can compost your food waste instead of simply tossing into the trash can.

If you choose to com - post food yourself, you’ll need a compost bin. There are many types of compost bins, including ones you can make yourself or others that you can buy at retail locations such as a hardware store.

Johnson County K-State Extension has resources that can help you start composting today by visiting ksre.k-state.edu and searching “Composting Yard Waste.”

Backyard composting isn’t for everyone, however. Try one of these other composting options instead:

• Compost Collective KC (compostcollectivekc.com) collects food waste from households, businesses and apartments. It also has a bin -swap program. Food waste goes to Urbavore Urban Farm for processing into compost.
• KC Can Compost (kccancompost.com) collects food waste from individuals, businesses and special events along with offering drop-off locations.
• Olathe residents can now take food waste to the City of Olathe Yard Waste drop-off location at 1100 Hedge Lane. The drop-offs go to Missouri Organic Recycling for composting.

Missouri Organic Recycling (missouriorganic.com) collects food waste from businesses and larger scale food waste sources. The firm also work with the Chiefs and Royals and even collect the food waste from Shawnee Mission School District school cafeterias.

The Shawnee Mission School District has done a fantastic job with food waste collection in all its school lunchrooms. The Gardner Edgerton School District started a similar program with plans to expand food composing to include more schools.

Composting is a wonderful way to keep food waste out of the landfill, but the best way to reduce food waste is to not waste the food to begin with. Being careful to not purchase too much food in bulk and storing perishable foods the correct way are two of several ways that you can avoid wasting food.

Interested in learning more about these options, please contact me at brandon.hearn@jocogov.org or 913-715-6936.

Brandon Hearn is environmental health specialist at the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment.