(upbeat music) - Waste Less Solutions' mission is to prevent and divert food waste in Utah through rescue, education, and consulting.

Founder and President Dana Williamson is here with details.

Welcome Dana.

- [Dana] Thank you Mary.

- I'm so glad to have you because there is so much food waste in our country.

So I'm sure that's why you started this organization.

- Yeah absolutely.

When I learned about how bad food waste was for the environment, that was my real motivation for starting this is when food goes to the landfill to rot, it lets off methane gas, which is actually more harmful than the carbon dioxide from our cars.

And I just thought, "No one knows this.

No one's talking about this.

We need to be talking about this."

And at the same time, we have all these hungry people, right?

- Right, I had no idea it put off methane.

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Yes.

- More reason to get on this right away.

- [Dana] Exactly.

- So why do people waste so much food?

- Yeah, it's a great question, right?

I mean it's the psychology study around that.

One of the things that I've seen in research, especially in the United States, is we just have an overabundance of food, right?

Your bread goes bad, you can go back to the grocery store, there's an aisle long display of bread.

So you don't have that sense of like, "I need to use this all before it goes bad," 'cause there might not be others.

So I feel like that is a major reason for it.

- [Mary] Yeah.

- Just overabundance - And maybe buying in bulk?

- Yes.

- When you can't possibly use it before some of it goes bad.

- Yeah, those prices get us at the big box stores and then we get it home and you waste it.

You ended up wasting more money had you just bought a single lettuce or single olive oil.

- Right.

And what about leftovers?

People have trouble in this country with leftovers.

- I know.

Okay, my dream is that one day we put on wedding invitations please bring Tupperware for the the leftovers.

We don't appreciate the food.

And when you think a chef has gone into making it, or if even yourself, you took time, your money you put into it, let's realize the value of that and the worth of that and eat leftovers.

There's ways you can repurpose it, make it better, things like that.

- Yeah exactly.

Well thank you so much for starting it and for being here.

Thank you.

- Yeah, thank you.

- And if you would like to know more about wasting less food with Waste Less Solutions, second Chance Dance, they're having a special event August 28th from six to nine at the Salt Lake Culinary Education Center.

Or you just wanna know about not wasting go to wastelesssolutions.org.

Wastelesssolutions.org.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching Contact.

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