Ugly Produce, Killer Compost: Welcome To Zero-Waste Week!

It's a shocking statistic: Americans throw out nearly 40% of their food. As this number has made the rounds over the past few years, chefs, organizations and home cooks have started to take action, but there's a long road ahead. That's why we've created Zero-Waste Week, where we're devoting most of our posts to the issue of food waste, from interviews with notable figures involved in taking action to recipes to help you turn seemingly spent ingredients into delicious dishes.

Throughout Zero-Waste Week, we'll also have announcements about initiatives that aim to educate and efforts to eradicate food waste. For instance, WASTED! The Story of Food Waste, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and presented by Zero Point Zero Production and Anthony Bourdain, premieres this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

A few weeks back saw the release of Scraps, Wilt + Weeds: Turning Wasted Food Into Plenty, a cookbook and manifesto by Mads Refslund and Tama Matsucka Wong. (Look for recipes from this book and others throughout the week.) Another new book of note is Project 258: Making Dinner at Fish & Game, by Zakary Pelaccio and Peter Barrett. The book's intro reads, "Fish & Game's mission statement can best be summed up in two sentences, one interrogative and one declarative: 'What does this place taste like?' And 'Let's not waste food.'"

We'll follow these important releases and others, and for those who already want to dig deeper into the topic of food waste, please visit our archive of stories, featuring everything from chef activism to artistic approaches. And if all goes well, by the end of the week, you'll be composting, buying the ugliest produce at the market and cooking with ingredients that you used to casually toss in the garbage.