Save the Waffle: Reducing Food Waste in Your Kitchen | Lesly Baesens | TEDxCherryCreek
The United Nations estimated that 30 percent of the food produced worldwide is wasted. That’s like getting ready to eat three crispy, delicious Belgian waffles and tossing one straight in the trash. When we waste food, we are wasting all the resources and labor that went into producing, transporting, refrigerating, and packaging that food. In the landfill, food also produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Join Lesly Baesens, Food Waste Recovery Program Administrator for the City and County of Denver -and Belgian native- in saving the waffle. Lesly will teach you practical tips on reducing food waste at home, which will not only lower your carbon footprint but also save you time in the kitchen and money in your food budget. Lesly is deeply passionate about sustainability and believes even small individual changes can result in major collective impact. As the Food Waste Recovery Program Administrator for the City of Denver’s Department of Public Health & Environment, Lesly works with residents, city staff, food banks and pantries to ensure that food never ends up in landfills but is instead eaten, redistributed or composted. When the COVID pandemic hit, Lesly applied this ‘no food waste’ philosophy to tackling the immediate hunger needs of Denverites affected by the economic shut down by connecting emergency food providers with supplies and food to keep them operating in the face of increased demand. Lesly has made appearances on Denver ABC7 and on Denver 8 TV, and was featured on PBS Newshour “Waste Not, Want Not” series. She has also participated in the Green Team Academy podcast and was a speaker at Mayor Michael Hancock’s Sustainable Denver Summit and at ICLEI’s Resilient Cities Global Forum, Germany. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx