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This At-Home Solution Can Reduce Your Food Waste By 90% In Hours
When it's time to clean out the fridge and food that was once fresh goes straight to the garbage—it hurts a little. Because as it stands, food waste is a substantial contributor to climate change. Not only does the handling and transportation of food waste generate more carbon dioxide, but it also releases methane (a harmful greenhouse gas) once it reaches landfills.
Whether we realize it or not, the choices we make in the kitchen matter. Households are responsible for 39% of food waste, more than restaurants, farms, and grocery stores. The average American family wastes nearly one-third of the food they buy! But now there's something we can do about it.
Join the foodcycling movement
What if you could reduce your food waste by 90% in just a few hours, at the push of a button? Working to address the urgent food waste crisis, Vitamix® and its technology partner, Food Cycle Science Corporation, have launched the Eco 5, the newest generation of their FoodCyclerTM. This convenient tool helps households cut down their food waste through an inspiring process called foodcycling.
"As a FoodCycler, the Eco 5 uses a process of drying, grinding, and cooling to reduce our food waste to a tenth of its original volume," he describes. It sounds fancy but couldn't be simpler. Using the Eco 5 is as easy as adding food scraps to a processing bucket (with the largest capacity on the market). Once it's full, you just close the lid and push the start button. The Eco 5 then monitors conditions inside and makes adjustments to the environment and blade direction, transforming food waste into plant food.
Foodcycling and the food waste crisis
Food waste is largely a household crisis. But foodcycling provides individuals and families an opportunity to be a part of the solution, with the Eco 5 as an exciting alternative to food waste disposal. Not to mention, it's odorless and quiet. "Users often comment on how amazing it is to see days' worth of coffee grinds, eggshells, chicken bones, and other trimmings fill the processing bucket only to see it reduced into plant food that can fit in their cupped hands," Jud describes.
Aside from the convenience of shrinking our food waste, foodcycling also cultivates a more sustainable state of mind. While composting is usually put on hold during winter months, foodcycling is a process we can run year-round. Plus, it keeps us extra conscious of the food we buy compared to the food we consume.
Reducing food waste is now easier than ever
There's a potential for food waste practically every time we're in the kitchen, but the Eco 5 makes foodcycling easy and convenient at every snack, meal, and coffee break. Vitamix already has a reputation of elite design and reliability (nod to everyone's favorite blender), and that extends to this FoodCycler. As a unit, the Eco 5 is about the size of an office wastebasket. But its food collector component is designed to sit (stylishly) on your countertop, helping you keep the kitchen clean. With its ease of use and small footprint, home cooks in any size kitchen can now be a part of a solution to food waste," explains Jud.
The full cycle of food
Instead of the pit we feel in our stomach when food becomes waste, foodcycling invites us to embrace the whole life cycle of food—we'll explain. When the Eco 5 shrinks our food waste, it leaves us with plant food that can be used in gardens to enhance soil for growing future produce. "When that same produce reaches the plates of family and friends, then any trimmings or leftovers can go right back into the Eco 5," explains Jud. This creates an inspiring life cycle between our kitchen and our garden. "Plant food to plant to plate, and around and around."
