Best if Labeled By: Understanding the Role of Labels in Food Waste
Open Trash Lab aims to understand how the lack of standardized expiration labeling raises obstacles to reducing food waste by collecting data on retailers' uses of dates and language on food packaging.
Leader
Ursula Kaczmarek
Location
Joralemon Brooklyn, NY 11201
About the project
This citizen science project will collect and analyze new data on New York City food retailers’ use of date labels and the effect labeling has on unpurchased, safe-to-eat products ending up in the solid waste stream. Through surveys of retailers and audits of food items destined for landfill, we aim to build a database researchers and citizen scientists can use to build discussion around food waste and ways of reducing it.
In addition to data collection and analysis, we will also engage interested members of the community, sustainability and anti-waste advocates, and researchers in discussion of the data and preliminary findings, as well as ways of building on this pilot to conduct further research.
The Steps
Development of data collection plan, including geographic scope, survey design, solid waste audit methods, and data coding and management methods
Target completion date: 01.15.2020
Identification of available storage media and back-up methods for digital media
Target completion date: 01.15.2020
Analytical study design
Target completion date: 01.15.2020
Survey administration and solid waste assessment
Target completion date: 03.15.2020
Quantitative analysis
Target completion date: 06.15.2020
Discussion of findings/educational outreach
Target completion date: 08.15.2020
Why we‘re doing it
Food waste is a major concern in New York City and around the country. A lack of standardized date labels and the use of dates to denote product quality rather than product safety make it difficult to reduce food waste at the retail and consumer level. We want to understand what role food labels play in safe-to-consume food ending up in the garbage.