AT&T Stadium, along with the EPA, the city of Dallas, nonprofit Rock and Wrap It Up! and Food Source DFW diverted 2,800 pounds of leftover food from landfills during the NCAA Final Four activities in North Texas.
The organizations prevented food waste by delivering the food to local homeless shelters.
Diverting food waste from landfills also reduces the generation of harmful greenhouse gas emissions. When food is disposed of in a landfill, it decomposes rapidly and becomes a significant source of methane.
After paper, food waste comprises the greatest volume of waste going into US landfills, the EPA says. In 2012, 36 million tons of food waste were generated, but only 3 percent of this waste stream was diverted from landfills.
The EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge seeks to reduce the environmental impact of food and other widely-used everyday items through their entire life cycle, including how they are extracted, manufactured, distributed, used, reused, recycled and disposed. Last week nine additional colleges joined the Food Recovery Challenge, whose some 713 participants including Whole Foods, MGM Resorts and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.
