The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently announced that all thirty National Hockey League (NHL) professional teams across the United States and Canada are now collaborating with the “Rock and Wrap It Up” program to collect and provide leftover food to emergency homeless shelters and food pantries.  The Rock and Wrap It Up (RWU) program is part of the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge.

RWU started back in 1991 and is credited with recycling over one hundred million pounds of unwanted food and providing food to more than two hundred million people. The RWU program collects uneaten food and leftovers from hotels, concerts, sporting events, corporate meetings, school cafeterias, and political rallies, and distributes them to over forty thousand participating food pantries and shelters. RWU relies on local volunteers to collect and box leftover waste from the games – with the incentive of receiving a tour of the hosting team’s locker room and main office – and then deliver to the designated charities.

The EPA estimates that food waste is responsible for almost fifteen percent of all municipal solid waste and almost all of it is disposed of in landfills or incinerators. With fifteen percent of all US households being at risk for experiencing hunger, programs like RWU and the Food Recovery Challenge are looking for new and innovative ways to feed people instead of landfills.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Are you paying money every month to dispose of your company’s or building’s food waste? Take a good look at the food that being thrown into the garbage bin – is there perfectly good, uneaten food that could be donated to a food pantry? Are there scraps that could be used for animal feed? Could landscaping waste be composted? Going “green” with your organic waste can help you save “green” every month!