If Food is Too Good to Waste, Why Do We Waste It? Join us for the May 8th Community of Practice

This month's sustainability community of practice gathering is focusing on two of our priority topic areas - Sustainable Food Practices/Reducing Food Waste and Sustainability Engagement.
 

Join us for a talk with 

Laura Moreno MS, PhD in Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group (ERG)

Laura will discuss her work, research and goals on preventing food waste through individual behavior change.

"The over­all goal of my research is to reduce the amount of food that is wasted in the United States. It is esti­mated that around 40% of the edi­ble food grown in the United States never gets eaten!  Focus­ing on influ­enc­ing behav­ior to pre­vent food waste in households is still a new endeavor. Specifically, my research applies sociological, psychological, and economic theories to the process of wasting food. I worked in two of the com­mu­ni­ties pilot­ing the U.S. EPA’s Food: Too Good to Waste pro­gram which should be launched nation­ally soon to perform the research.  Pre­vi­ously, while at the EPA, I worked pri­mar­ily on proper dis­posal of food waste via com­post­ing and anaer­o­bic diges­tion. Now, I focus on pre­vent­ing the food from being wasted in the first place because that has the poten­tial to have a much larger impact. What I am find­ing is fascinating!"

Laura earned her B.S. degree from UC Berke­ley in Con­ser­va­tion and Resource Stud­ies with a con­cen­tra­tion in Envi­ron­men­tal Edu­ca­tion. While an under­grad­u­ate, she ini­ti­ated and led sev­eral cam­pus pro­grams relat­ing to green build­ing and recy­cling, includ­ing the Build­ing Sus­tain­abil­ity at Cal Pro­gram. They aimed to edu­cate and engage stu­dents while reduc­ing the cam­pus’ envi­ron­men­tal impact. Prior to ERG, Laura worked at the U.S. EPA on renew­able energy and sus­tain­able mate­r­ial man­age­ment with a focus on wasted food. At ERG, she plans to explore the role of the indi­vid­ual in envi­ron­men­tal behav­ior change through the lens of sus­tain­able mate­ri­als management.

12:00 - introductions
12:10 - 1:00pm - Laura Moreno
1:00 - 1:30pm - open discussion and updates from the group