Focus Frostburg and Food Waste

Focus Frostburg is a yearly fair that informs us of sustainability and climate awareness in our surrounding areas. This fair welcomes not only the students of Frostburg but also faculty members, and the people of Frostburg. In LUC 232 there were a series of presentations discussing certain issues like food system efforts, food waste, and organic compost. Sherry Frick, a member of the Western Maryland Food Council discussed the purpose of the group, their overall mission, and the goals that they have set to achieve. The Western Maryland Food Council started in 2015 thanks to a grant that was awarded to them by the Town Creek Foundation. The purpose of the group is to bring people together and identify problems in the food system and work to find a solution. Their mission is to bring together diverse stakeholders to integrate the aspects of the food system to sustain and enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of Western Maryland. These members of the WMFC come out of different health systems, academic organizations, certain government officials, and food producers and distributors. Sherry emphasized that, "together we are stronger then we are when working independently." An interesting success story that also was told was a campaign called "Apples for All". With this campaign, Sherry Frick as well as The Salvation Army harvested an estimated 6,000 pounds of apples from a nearby orchard and delivered them to homeless shelters, schools, local food markets, and senior centers. Sherry got together volunteers to hand pick these apples and deliver them. Sherry added that, "its really important for us to try and get food for the people that need it." This group is constantly looking for members and even helpful information that will bring a solution to this overall problem which is food access. To learn more about the Western Maryland Food Council click here

Another presentation that was displayed was by Steven Birchfield, a member of the Prince George's County Organic Composting Facility. What was discussed was the overall meaning of this facility and what we can do as consumers to help. This compost facility processes over 50,000 tons of material annually. Yard waste, including grass clippings, leaves, brush, small tree limbs, Christmas trees, and even food scraps are collected from about 164,000 households in the county and delivered to the facility. Once the yard waste is delivered, it is placed in windrows and processed into compost. This compost is then sold to retailers in bulk. The revenue from the sale of the material is then returned to the county to offset the cost of the operation of composting. The whole idea of reduce, reuse, and recycle was being constantly thrown into the discussion. Steven explained, "this is all a constant circle" when it comes to composting yard waste. He also wanted to make it known that "composting is just a step". He expressed that we don't have to send our food waste to them for us to help. We can do as little as putting a banana peel in the soil outside. It's going to take a lot more to get where we need to be when it comes to how we use or "reuse" our materials. To learn more about composting yard waste click here.