In episode 223, we chat with Marley Goldin, recipe developer who has a passion for using her voice to educate her audience about sustainability and cooking.
We cover information about specific ways you can educate your audience to reduce food waste by cooking in smaller batches, show them how easy it is to start composting and why it’s needed as well as using all the parts of a food in recipes to reduce waste!
Listen on the player in this post or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.
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Marley is a mom, foodie, and champion for living an attainable sustainable lifestyle. She is the recipe developer, food photographer, and voice behind Marley’s Menu, a positive platform that promotes balanced and sustainable eating in an easily digestible way. Combining her degree in Environmental Health Science and love for great food has been a dream come true. It is her mission to prove that everyone can make a difference, through small changes that can collectively make a big impact.
Takeaways
- Food waste is basically any food product that is not consumed and instead goes to landfill.
- When it is in the landfill, it doesn’t have access to oxygen so it doesn’t actually decompose the way it would naturally. Instead of breaking down into organic materials, it actually breaks down into water and methane, which is a greenhouse gas.
- Food bloggers have some sort of influence on the way people eat.
- With our modern lifestyles, we aren’t really thinking about what’s happening to the food and what it takes to get to our plate.
- Education about the matter is the key issue. Talk about things like food waste in terms of linking to other recipes that use similar ingredients that they have purchased for your recipe.
- Coming from a sustainability viewpoint, provide tips on how to properly store, reheat, reuse the leftovers. Even just giving that option and putting it in text is reminding people you can eat this tomorrow.
- As a food blogger, begin to test recipes in smaller batches so you waste less.
- As food bloggers, we tend to consume more ingredients than the average person. Consider composting to help with that waste.
- As food bloggers, on an individual level, we make tons of food and we can’t always eat it. Share it with family, friends or neighbors.
Resources Mentioned
9 Food Choices We Can Make To Live More Sustainably
How to Save a Planet podcast
Learn More
You can add carbon footprint labels to your recipe cards. Find out more in episode 171 with Matthew Isaacs.
Transcript
Click for full text.
Intro:
Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, where food bloggers come to get their fill of the latest tips, tricks, and insights into the world of food blogging. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll provide you with the tools you need to add value to your blog. We’ll also ensure you’re taking care of yourself, because food blogging is a demanding job. Now, please welcome your host, Megan Porta.
Megan Porta:
Hey awesome food bloggers. Do you struggle with knowing exactly what you should be doing to move the needle forward in your business? Do you struggle with knowing what to focus on next? If so, if this sounds like you, I have two solutions for you. Number one is mastermind groups. There is so much power and getting people together and helping to solve each other’s problems. At Eat Blog Talk, we have put together our own mastermind groups and we are hosting these weekly. You can join at any time. You can try it out for a month or you can sign up for a quarter or you can go all in and sign up for an entire year. Come join us. See if it’s a great fit for you, and this will really help you to solve those problems you’re having in your business and give you clarity about what you should be doing next to move your business forward.
The next solution is the Eat Blog Talk membership. I have spent all of 2021 so far putting so much value inside of the membership. It is such a supportive and wonderful place to be for food bloggers. We are learning so much from each other. We are joining together in monthly intensive calls, where we focus on very specific parts of food blogging in order to grow our businesses in massive ways. We also have guest experts come in and join us very regularly to talk about really specific parts of food blogging. We get one-on-one access to these experts, such as Matt Molen from email crush, Casey Markee from MediaWyse. So many great people are joining us in these sessions and they are super valuable. There are so many reasons why you should be in the membership. I could not even start touching on all of it. If you’re tired of wandering around aimlessly in your business and not knowing what to focus on, give the membership a try for free for two weeks. Go to eatblogtalk.com. You can sign up for the masterminds there, and you can also start the process of getting into the membership for two weeks, just to check it out. The rest of us can’t wait to see you inside.
Hey, food bloggers. Welcome to another episode of Eat Blog Talk. I am so thrilled that you are joining us today because I have Marley Goldin with me from Marley’s Menu. We’re going to have an awesome conversation about why food bloggers have this responsibility to encourage sustainable habits in the kitchen and how we can do so. Marley is a mom, foodie and champion for living an attainable, sustainable lifestyle. She is the recipe developer, food photographer and the voice behind Marley’s Menu, a positive platform that promotes balanced and sustainable eating in an easily digestible way. Combining her degree in environmental health science and love for great food has been a dream come true. It is her mission to prove that everyone can make a difference through small changes that can collectively make a big impact. Marley, all of that speaks to me. I love your bio and I’m so excited to talk about this topic with you today, but first we all want to hear your fun fact.
Marley Goldin:
Thank you so much for having me, Megan. I’m so happy to be here. My fun fact would have to be that I have over 30 pairs of prescription eyeglasses. I worked in the eyewear industry for about 10 years before I found this passion in food blogging. So it’s really fun because every morning I get to wake up and look at my collection of glasses and be like, okay, who do I want to be today? Which is very familiar feeling for most bloggers. We have so many hats we have to wear. In my case, it’s just so many glasses.
Megan:
I feel like glasses can completely change the look of a person. So you can completely change who you want to look like each day. That’s so cool. So it’s not shoes or accessories. Well, I guess glasses would be an accessory.
Marley:
I call them a neceaccessory because it’s an accessory that I need to see.
Megan:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I love that. So what’s your favorite pair? Describe it. Or do you not have a favorite?
Marley:
Gosh. You know what that’s like asking what’s your favorite song.
Megan:
Or food, right?
Marley:
I have a pair that I wear most often just because it’s most comfortable and they’re just pretty average. They’re a tortoise shell pair. But it’s my go-to. So you’ll see me wearing that a lot on my social media.
Megan:
That’s awesome. I love that. I need glasses. So maybe I’ll ask you where I should go for those. I’m the worst. I have horrible eyesight in my left eye and I just keep trudging along and squinting. My husband’s like, go get some glasses, woman. It’s so dumb. That’s super fun. So you’re here to talk about sustainability. I love that you have a passion for this. I was reading through your bio and everything this morning. I was thinking, you know, it’s so true that food bloggers really do have a big responsibility in this world because anyone can type a recipe into Google and guess what comes up? Our blogs, our recipe, our food. We feed people, our recipes sustain people. So part of our responsibility is to educate those people about the important things. Like wasting food and it’s our responsibility to encourage them to make better choices. So I would love for you to tell us Marley, what is food waste and why do you think it’s a problem?
Marley:
So food waste is basically any food product that is not consumed and instead goes to landfill. So that’s the distinction, is when it ends up in the landfill. The reason that’s an issue is because when it is in the landfill, it doesn’t have access to oxygen because it’s buried underneath. So it doesn’t actually decompose the way it would naturally. Instead of breaking down into organic materials that just kind of become the earth and turn into soil. It actually breaks down into water and methane, which is a greenhouse gas. What happens to that water is it sinks to the bottom of the landfill. It mixes with all the other trash and other chemicals that are in there. It can sometimes leak out in the form of leachate into our environment. Then between that and the greenhouse gases, it is contributing to things like climate change. So once it goes to landfill, it no longer is easily decomposed into an organic material.
Megan:
That’s a big deal. I mean, everything you just said is no joke. That is a really big deal. It’s easy to not think about it as we’re tossing food away, but to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and what we’re doing overall as a whole is really sad. It makes me sad. I think anyone would be able to see that too. That’s really not good. So what can we as food bloggers do to turn this around? Are there steps we can take?
Marley:
There are certainly steps we can take. As you’ve kind of touched on is food bloggers, we do have some sort of influence on the way people eat. Unfortunately our current system, our current food industry and the way we eat now, there’s a big disconnect between where food comes from, where it goes when we finish it. With our modern lifestyles, we aren’t really thinking about what’s happening to the food and what it takes to get to our plate. So, number one, I always say is education. The way we can educate people is to talk about things like food waste in terms of linking to other recipes that use similar ingredients that they have purchased for your recipe. So let’s say you’re doing a recipe for a strawberry cheesecake, and it only calls for four ounces of strawberries. In the store you buy a 12 ounce package. Give them options to use up those strawberries that they’re not using for your recipe by linking to other recipes that use fresh strawberries to encourage people to think about, okay, now I have all these extra strawberries, what am I going to do with them instead of letting them sit in the fridge and then inevitably going to waste.
Megan:
That’s a great one. I always think about this when I’m developing a recipe too. Instead of saying I don’t know, you always come up upon those recipes that are half a can of tomato paste. What in the world am I going to do with the rest of that? I’m going to throw that away, or it’s going to sit in my fridge for a month and then get moldy and then I’m going to throw it away. So when I’m developing recipes, I always think about that. How are they going to be able to use everything in the recipe without wasting? Even weird or unusual ingredients such as, I don’t know why this came to mind, but hoisin sauce. I made this recipe with hoisin sauce and it was really good, but I don’t use hoisin sauce other than that recipe. So I’m assuming that other people are probably in the same boat as me. So I try to think about that. Like what are really common ingredients and using the whole can of something and that helps right. That’s going to help people not waste.
Marley:
Yeah. On that note these are all things that are helpful to the user and that we might be doing anyway, for SEO purposes and things like that. But coming from a sustainability viewpoint, also providing tips on how to properly store, reheat, reuse the leftovers. Even just giving that option and putting it in text is reminding people, okay, I didn’t finish my plate, but I can eat this again tomorrow. I don’t have to throw it away, my leftovers. So educating your readers on how to save, even freeze sometimes and then reheat the food is a really great way to encourage them not to waste it.
Megan:
I like that too. So freezing is great because you can use it later. So provide all of that information to your reader upfront, so they know exactly how to reheat and how to freeze. I love that you mentioned reheating because I never think to mention that. Freezing is a no-brainer. Freeze the leftovers, but reheating, I don’t know why I’ve never thought to use that. But that’s really great advice. What else do you have? Recipe testing came to mind because we test and then we make again, so hopefully we can eat all of that, but how do you recommend being more sustainable with that part of it?
Marley:
So for us, our responsibility as recipe developers, there’s kind of three things I would love to touch on. One is when you’re actually developing recipes, it’s important to think about if you can, to test in smaller batches. What that means, especially if it’s something you never made before, or it’s something that you have a feeling you’re going to have to test a couple, two, three times to even get it to a point where it’s good to give away or to eat yourself. It’s important to think about testing them in smaller batches so that the end result is wasting less. For me with cookies, I have such a hard time with cookies. Cookies take me so many times to get right. There’s been times where I’ve made a cookie that I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even eat it. It was just, something was just so wrong. Because I tested it in a smaller batch, the overall impact of how much I was wasting was a lot less. I was so glad that I did that. Then later on you can, if you’re making a batch, you can always double the recipe to get the right amount that you want for your site. But that way overall, your impact is lessened. If you’re testing smaller batches.
Megan:
The cookies were such a great example because I think we’ve all been there. We feel invested because we’ve got all of this cookie batter, this cookie dough, and we’re like, well, I have to make it all. Then if it fails, oh my goodness. That’s so much time too. Time wasted and ingredients wasted. I did that with my chocolate cupcakes. I tested it. I felt like it was so many times before I got it right. I wasted so much. I wasted so much food and it was really frustrating. But I love that idea of just having the recipe, making it a really small portion of it. Then you’re not wasting all that time and all of those ingredients. That’s such a great idea. You could really do that with anything. I mean, any recipe.
Marley:
Absolutely. It helps when you’re writing out your blog posts. You can even say, oh, you can make this in a single serving, or you can easily half this recipe because you’ve tested that and you know it’s true. You’re not just saying that because you think it will work.
Megan:
That’s good. I like that.
Marley:
The second point I would like to touch on for what we can do personally is as food bloggers, we tend to consume more ingredients than the average person. If you can, and you’re willing and you have the ability to, it is a really good idea to consider composting because we just have more scraps in the average household. It’s something that I think intimidates a lot of people, but it’s actually not that hard. For me, I live in Orlando and a lot of cities have the same program where they will provide a compost bin for you for free. You just go to your city’s website and you request one and it literally comes within a week. Then you just place it in your backyard. You can keep a little pale on your kitchen counter.
Once it fills up, you just bring it back to your compost in your backyard. It takes about six months to get soil. But once you get there, it’s really, really great nutrient rich soil that you can use in your garden. If you don’t have a yard, if you’re living somewhere like an apartment or you have a shared space, or if you’re in a big city, there’s tons of programs that will actually come by and pick up your compost scraps for you. So you don’t even have to deal with any kind of bin, you just keep a pale that you save and then weekly they’ll come pick it up, just like your trash or your recycling. There’s programs for $5 a month. Sometimes they’re up to $15 a month, but it’s really a good investment if you’re thinking about, you know, the amount of ingredients that we consume and the amount of impact that we have as individuals, as food bloggers.
Megan:
You just gave us some really great ideas and things that I hadn’t considered, like people who live in apartments, they’re still an option for them to compost. I think you’re right. I think it seems like a really daunting thing, but once you get into the habit of it and find that flow, I’m sure it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just like anything else. Like when I’m done with cardboard, I walk over to that part of my house where recycling sits. We just get into that habit. Pretty soon it’s a no-brainer, we’re just doing it without even thinking about it. So thank you for bringing that up. That encouraged me to look into that because I do not do that, but I would love to contribute in that way.
Marley:
To be honest, I find that having that little compost pail on my kitchen counter makes it even easier. I don’t even have to walk over to my trash can, which is under the sink. I put even my eggshells just right into that pale and it’s just super easy. It’s right there. Then once a week, I bring it outside when it fills up. So I think that, again, it’s intimidating, but once you actually dig your heels in, you’ll find it’s super easy and it will make you feel good. On the third point that I wanted to make about, what we can do as food bloggers, on an individual level is thinking about, we make tons of food and we can’t always eat it. A lot of us have family and friends that we share it with or neighbors.
But outside of that, there’s actually food share programs that you can find if you Google in your area, food share programs. There’s different websites and resources that will connect you with people who are in need of food. You can directly communicate with these families and tell them what you’re making and what you have. They’ll tell you whether or not they want it. Then you find a place to meet up and pass that food along. So if you don’t feel like you have enough people to share your food with, I personally live in a place where I don’t have a lot of family around me where, during the pandemic, it was weird to share food with neighbors and things like that. These food share programs have really made it so that I was able to share things that I was making and not necessarily throw it out and actually give it to people who need it.
Megan:
So what are those programs called?
Marley:
They’re actually going to be different depending on your area. So if you Google your city and just write, food share program, you should find one. Sometimes it will be a non-profit. Sometimes it will be an app that you can download. So there’s different things depending on where you are. I think it’s something that people don’t even think to look into. So just do a little Google search and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to find and connect with people who are in need.
Megan:
Again, just something that maybe we’ve heard about, but we don’t bring to our full attention and don’t actually follow through with looking into. So that’s another really great thing. So the food share program. Google that if you’re interested in it, see what comes up for your city. That’s a great option. I love that. What do you think about it? I do this all the time. Where I used to make an entire pan of lasagna and my husband is gluten free, so he doesn’t eat it. My boys are really picky, so it’s me, so I would freeze some of it. Then I would try to eat it that whole week. What do you think about finding ways to give to your church or your neighbors, or finding people in your community who will actually benefit from an entire pan of lasagna?
Marley:
Yeah. I love that. Part of sustainability, you can’t live sustainably without having that ethical portion connected to it. It’s a movement that seeps into every part of equality and civil rights and things like that because ,the people who are affected by climate change, things like that, tend to be people who are also affected by other social issues. So a lot of it leads into each other. So bringing up the fact of giving to people who are in need, who are in different socio-economic status than you, these are all issues that come together in sustainability. You can’t have one without the other. So when you think about food from an environmental viewpoint, you’re also thinking about how I can get food to the people who don’t have it. Because outside of the environmental impact of food waste, there’s also the ethical part of food waste where, if you put it in simple terms, food is leaving places that desperately need it to come to places that inevitably waste it.
Bringing that up, thinking about giving it in church groups and things like that, like that’s a huge part of sustainability. Absolutely. I’m glad you brought that up because I think it’s really important to think about that part of it too.
Megan:
I think we can all find those avenues that we can contribute food to. Like churches, like we mentioned, but there are other things too. If you just give it a little bit of thought, maybe make your meal in one of those foil pans, because you’re going to be bringing it to a food shelter, whatever. Thinking through that head of time. What else can we do ahead of time to think through all of our ingredients? Do you have any tips for that?
Marley:
Absolutely. I’m all about planning my shopping and things like that. I’ve heard you talk about on this podcast for content batching and things like that. It goes hand in hand with sustainability because if you’re buying an ingredient, like you said before, like a hoisin sauce or something that you’re going to use for one recipe and don’t necessarily always use it. I would encourage you to plan on making other recipes with that particular ingredient throughout the week. You don’t have to post it at any specific time. If you want to spread it out, it’s not super close in terms of when you’re putting out your content, but you can take the same ingredients that you buy on your shopping list. You can make a bunch of recipes with it, shoot it all in the same week so that it’s used up and it’s not wasted.
Then you have it, your repertoire repertoire to put out later when you’re writing up your blog posts and things like that. So planning is a huge part of my daily life, because I think about everything that I’m going to buy for the week, I think about everything I’m gonna make with those ingredients that I’ll have. Then later down the line, I think about when I want to release those blog posts, when I actually want to share that content with the world, but at least it’s done and it’s done in a way where I’m not wasting extra ingredients.
Megan:
I love that thought. I’m a huge planner as well. It’s so worthwhile, not just with food, but in any part of your life to sit down and look ahead and think through things and plan a little bit. So if we do that with our recipes, we don’t open our fridge to find that old lettuce. I mean, I feel like that’s a constant story for me and I hate that, but it’s like, oh man, that bell pepper. You find all the old things. I wish I really would’ve planned through that. As food bloggers, we are planners because we have to, if we don’t plan, we fail. So planning our food and our ingredients is another way that we can just benefit the world and also benefit our blogs. So I love that idea just to take that time, to just sit down and think. It doesn’t even require that much time, right? Just a few minutes to think through what you’re using and what you need to buy.
Marley:
It will also help you naturally connect your posts to each other. So it will help with tactical internal linking. It will help if you maybe want to do a Roundup down the line, you’ll have things that have similar ingredients. You’ll have easy ways to interlink your content. That’s just a by-product of planning and doing things in a sustainable way.
Megan:
Here’s something I’ve been trying to do lately. So I have not been making many new recipes for my blog. I’m in republish mode right now. But when I do make new recipes, I try to align it with something else that’s going on. So we had guests over and it was a bunch of kids. So I took a bunch of our frozen food and just threw it in the air fryer and did a bunch of frozen air fryer side dishes. Fries and tater tots and things like that. It all got gobbled up because I knew that that event was coming. So thinking through events, is my family going to want dinner this week? Then maybe planning a side salad and a main dish. Just event planning, aligning with your editorial planning, if that makes sense.
Marley:
Absolutely.
Megan:
So what do you think about preserved ingredients versus natural ingredients? How do you plan through different types of ingredients?
Marley:
Yeah. I think the issue of food waste is something that everyone can touch on because regardless of your niche or whatever you’re making, that’s an issue that is prevalent in what you’re doing. But I do realize that my whole thing is sustainability. So all of my recipes have green tips, meaning it gives you little tips on how you can source your ingredients more sustainably, what to look for when you’re buying and things like that. That may not fit into everyone’s niche, but if it does, and if it’s accessible to you, there are other things we can do to promote sustainable living outside of talking about food waste. That’s talking about buying more natural ingredients, more organic, eating seasonally and eating locally. The reason those things are important from a sustainability standpoint is because all of those things have a lower environmental impact. So if you’re looking to decrease your own environmental footprint, buying organic things that don’t use any chemicals, pollutant chemical fertilizers, or pesticides, you’re supporting a farm that is going to have less pollutants associated with it. So by buying organic, local, seasonal, you’re putting less strain on the environment. So if that’s something that fits into your niche and you can recommend buying those things, you’re telling your readers to vote with their wallet. So you’re telling their readers to support brands that are doing things more sustainably.
Megan:
I love that. I always forget to think about that. We each have a responsibility to make sure that our footprint is not crazy off the charts. We have a responsibility, especially as food bloggers, to do that ourselves, and then to encourage our readers to do that as well. To actually think through that and decrease that footprint that we’re leaving. So I love all these tips. What else do you have? What else can we do to kind of inform our readers and educate them so that they are being more just cognizant of all of this?
Marley:
I think that we can also develop recipes that use all parts of the food. So for example, the ends of carrots make a really good pesto. They’re really flavorful and they’re completely edible and they’re healthy for you, but we tend to chop those off and throw them away. So just thinking about those things, when you’re sourcing ingredients, thinking about how you can use it to its fullest, instead of telling people to discard parts of the ingredient. That’s gonna contribute to less waste as well. All of these things that we’re talking about just by reading, just by putting this in front of your reader’s eyes, you’re just encouraging them to even think about it. Because like I said, we’re very disconnected from what happens to our food, where we get it from, where it comes from.
It’s just there in the store, in a plastic package. We pick it up and we eat what we want and discard what we don’t. That’s not because we don’t care, it’s because we’re not thinking about it. So just by talking about any of these things in your blog post, if you can get someone to read that, you’re educating them and you’re putting it at the front of their mind. I truly believe that if everyone were to be educated and to think about these things, they would make better choices, because I don’t think they’re actively choosing to not be sustainable. I think it’s just something that is not in front of my mind. So by doing these things, it’s just reiterating that we, we all have an impact on everything around us. I think it’s just easy to put these things in, and it helps with the structure of your blog posts, it’s giving useful information to the reader. A by-product of that is that it’s really encouraging people to think about where their food is coming from and where it’s going.
Megan:
Just having this conversation with you is making me think I need to do this and this. I don’t think we talk about this enough. This is a topic that needs to be discussed more often. So I love the fact that you were just encouraging us to encourage others to just think about it, just to give them those nuggets. Not telling them they have to do anything, but just providing them with a little bit of information and encouragement so that they can do the same. Then that will trickle down and maybe they’ll tell their neighbor. Oh, I got a compost bin. You know, like little things really will make a difference. We have a big responsibility as food bloggers. So I absolutely love this topic. As you were talking Marley, I was thinking not just of our blog posts, but we could take it beyond the blog post and do a fun Instagram story about cleaning out your fridge, or I got my compost bin here. I’m going to take you on this journey. I’ve never done this before, but here we go. We could make it a fun story so that people are like, Ooh, this is exciting. Then as the story goes on, then maybe other people would jump on board. What do you think of something like that?
Marley:
I couldn’t agree more. I think that just the topic of environmentalism has somehow become so polarizing and politicized, and it’s not something to agree or disagree about. We all live on this planet. We all care about our environment. It’s something we just don’t talk about enough, like you said. So let’s just stop the stigma about being delicate about this topic. We all care about it. It’s common ground. It affects all of us. So why don’t we talk about it, encourage everyone to just get on board and it’s a trickle effect, right? So even if you just impact one person, encourage one person to think about this. That’s going to snowball. It’s more and more people. Once we all, as a society, make a change and make a decision to live more sustainably, that trickles up into big corporations and to big brands. They see that people want this and there’s a need for this. It will change practices on a bigger scale. So it’s important to realize that we all have power to make a difference. Even if it’s the smallest thing, it’s changing the conversation, it’s changing the mindset. It’s showing that there’s demand for more sustainable practices on a bigger scale. That’s just the thing, even making one small difference, we have no idea how much that can ripple into a bigger impact.
Megan:
All so well said. I absolutely loved what you just said, Marley. Again, I mean, I feel like I’ve said this like 10 times, but as a food blogger, you have more weight. Your word, your voice carries more weight than most people. People are going to listen to us because we’re providing the recipes and we’re putting the time in to test those recipes. People are already listening. So if we just put those little nuggets in their ears, like you said, it will trickle down and trickle up. It’ll trickle everywhere. So just to start somewhere small too, because this is not a huge message of mine. I will be completely honest with you, but it’s important. This is an important topic. Having this chat with you, I’m thinking I’m going to start small with something. Maybe I will go get a compost bin and start there and just encourage my audience to do something similar. This has been super encouraging. Thank you so much, Marley. Is there anything else we missed about just tips for food bloggers or anything else for them to keep in mind?
Marley:
I just kind of want to drive home how closely the food industry and sustainability are related. I’m just going to give you a couple of stats just to kind of drive it home. The food industry itself accounts for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. It makes up a quarter of our global freshwater consumption annually. It contributes to deforestation to make space for plant and animal agriculture, contributes to land, air and water pollution, especially through fertilizers and pesticides needed to meet high demand. All of our food is packaged in plastic. So the biggest takeaway I can give you is, of all the billions of tons of food waste that happens, annually estimated that 50% of it happens at home. If you look at it in a positive light, it’s encouraging because that means we have the power to reduce the amount of food waste by half.
As high of an impact as the food industry has on the environment, for so much of it to go to waste is really disheartening. So I think I just want to drive home how closely food and sustainability are related. 5hat’s why in this conversation we’re talking about food bloggers who are in people’s homes, who are in people’s kitchens, who have a say in how people consume, source and use up their food. So we do have a voice here and we can make a big impact. So I just think it’s important to drive that home.
Megan:
This was super impactful for me. I can’t even tell you, so I appreciate that you brought this message to this platform, and I think this is a really important message to get into people’s ears. I love how passionate you are about it. You are well-informed, you’ve got great tips, you know statistics about what’s going on. You’re connected and I feel like you’re really on a mission to get the word out about this. So thank you so much. I just appreciate that about you Marley. So thank you so much.
Marley:
Just a quick note, if people do have interest in food and sustainability in particular, I do have a whole sustainability section on my website, which is just articles written by me. I do have my degree in environmental health science. So it’s articles about the food industry and sustainability in particular. So if there’s interest there, you can definitely check that out and it will provide you with all the information you need.
Megan:
Great. Yes, everyone, go check that out if you’re interested. Start small, provide some little nuggets to your audience today or this week or next week that can encourage them to be more sustainable in the kitchen. So, great message. It’s been just a pleasure to talk to you Marley. So thank you so much for being here today. Before you go, do you have a favorite quote to share with us or words of inspiration?
Marley:
Yeah. So this is a Jane Goodall quote. It’s, “you cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Megan:
That aligns so perfectly. I absolutely love that. We’re going to put together a show notes page for you Marley. So if anyone wants to go peek at that, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/Marleysmenu. You mentioned, Marley, that you have some resources on your blog that people can check out. Why don’t you tell us where your blog is and where people can find you on Instagram and other places?
Marley:
So my Instagram handle is just Marley’s menu, M A R L E Y S M E N U. And my blog is the same – Marleysmenu.com. If you go to Marleysmenu.com, there is a whole sustainability section. You can find it right at the top of the homepage.
Megan:
Well, thank you again, Marley, so much for being here and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see next time.
Outro:
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