Rochelle Strassner, sustainability and outreach engagement manager for SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, says that most Americans spend about a third of their time in the office and that’s where a portion of food waste is coming from.

“The EPA estimates wasted food makes up 58% of methane that is emitted from landfills. So it's a really big portion of greenhouse gases from landfills,” Strassner explained.

Strassner says you can help eliminate that food waste by being sustainable in the office.

“When you're packing your lunches, making sure you're using a reusable container, if you are able to use a glass, you know, Tupperware container, use that,” Strassner said.

And saving to-go boxes can also help.

“Use that for your lunches, but then you can also have a spare one in your office. So if there is extra food at an event or something like that, you can now take that home and that’s also addressing food waste,” Strassner said.

Strassner says a lot of items we think are trash are actually compost.

“Anything that is an organic material...so anything that is food is then going to be compost. Anything that doesn’t fit into organics or into what your local recycling rules are, the rest of it is going to be trash,” Strassner said.

She says compost items get reused.

“It decomposes and breaks down and then gets turned into a soil amendment that then can be used in your gardens or in landscaping or things like that and no it does not smell,” Strassner said.

At SUNY ESF, they conduct waste audits.

“We go and we take our trash and recycling. We dump it out. We see how much of the trash and recycling and even compost was in a certain bin. And then we re-sort it to see what should have been trash, what should have been recycling, and what should have been compost,” Strassner said.

Back in 2019, SUNY ESF standardized all their bins and implemented mini trash bins to help reduce waste.

“We make sure we always have all three, trash, recycling and compost, together,” Strassner said.

They will be moving the labels to on top of the bins to make it more accessible.

Strassner says it can be challenging to live a completely sustainable lifestyle, but it’s the small practices like in the office that can really make a difference.