At a March 8 conference panel at South by Southwest (SXSW), four anti-food waste innovators shared how shared how even the smallest choices we make can help prevent a large amount of food waste from entering landfills.

Let's start with the facts: nearly one in four Americans are food insecure, more than a third of all food made in the U.S. is wasted, and date labeling on food products is not federally mandated. With all that said, it feels like reducing food waste in our society is a gargantuan feat, but it's not as unachievable as some might think.

Called #TrashQueens: The Women Reimagining Food from the Waste Up, the panel shared how at-home actions such as rinsing vegetables in a simple vinegar solution and broader production ideas like upcycling leftover produce into a bag of chips can help reduce the effects of climate change.

The discussion featured four women working to reduce food waste: Monti Carlo, social media personality and host of Sinclair Broadcasting's Let's Eat; Rose Hartley, the former head of sustainability at Misfits Market; Kaitlin Mogentale, CEO and founder of Trashy Chips; and Dr. Lara Ramdin, chief scientist at FoodxClimate.

Climate change and its impacts on nourishment
Ramdin started off by sharing the crucial differences between food loss, which happens when food loses its quality or nutrient density "up until the point of retail"; and food waste, which occurs when food is discarded for being surplus or past its "best by" date. Sometimes, it's simply thrown out.

Climate change can negatively effect crop production and yield, Ramdin said, which in turn can reduce the amount of nutrients we get in produce that we have long assumed does not fluctuate. So when an individual goes to the grocery store and shops for an apple, for example, the effects of climate change can make apples less nutritious over time.

"So these things where we assume that you get certain amount of fiber, you get certain amount of micronutrients from an apple, is just not the case, and that's decreased significantly," she said.

All four women are working towards tackling food waste by taking food and produce that would otherwise be destined for the trash, and finding ways to bring it back into the food system. Their unique methods to eliminating food waste also serves to fight food insecurity, closing the gaps to provide food for those that need it.

Personal journeys into reducing food waste
Fighting food waste led Kaitlin Mogentale to found her own company, Pulp Pantry, which upcycles what would be wasted produce from other food manufacturers and uses it in the brand's signature Trashy Chips. That reintroduces those ingredients back into the food system rather than letting them get sent into landfills.

Mogentale told her backstory as part of the panel:

I happened to be at a friend's house seeing her juice a carrot – and I was already very committed to a zero waste lifestyle, had taken on veganism, all of this in light of being very passionate about the climate crisis and wanting to change my personal behaviors to match my values – and just realized firsthand when you juice a carrot, I mean, there's so much waste. So that little "aha" moment sparked me to just reach out to a bunch of food processors in the [Los Angeles] area, and realizing at each step of the way, as I got from local juice brands to national juice brands, there was no infrastructure or really a solution.

Our food manufacturing is a very linear model. You put ingredients in, and we've not designed waste out as a part of this circular process. That waste becomes a cost center for these producers, and they don't look at kind of the creativity and inherent nutrition left in food. And so I just started by approaching a couple big brands, and I said, "What if we devise a system to collect that material and upcycle it?" And that's what really got me started, and just got me passionate about really creating business solutions that fight waste with the goal of re-entering, I would say, school food.

Carlo, on the other hand, was a single mother shopping on a tight budget and searched for the best ways to make her food last longer and not end up in the trash. She explains:

In 2012 I was on a very restrictive budget, and I knew that there were a lot of other mothers and women – 74 percent of women are the ones that are making the food choices in the household – that were also dealing with restrictive budgets... So I started teaching classes in underserved neighborhoods, and I realized that even through simple recipes, most people don't really understand all of the potential that one vegetable has. They throw out a lot, and they also don't know how to store food. So I actually started teaching people how to shop in a food desert, even go to Walmart or Target, and I'd show them how to read food labels. And then we talk about, "Okay, you have a budget. You have $10, here's what you can buy, and here's what you can make with all of these [ingredients]."

How Austinites can reduce food waste within their own homes
Fighting food waste in your own home can start with the simplest changes to food storage, Carlo said. She uses her social media platform to educate others on how to properly store food at home, make produce last longer, and cook easy recipes. She additionally shares tips for those shopping in a food desert, or who are on a tight budget.

For example, she does not recommend storing potatoes in the same container as onions, because onions release ethylene which causes the potatoes to go bad faster. Instead, Carlo recommends storing them in separate containers as far away from each other as your pantry will allow.

Additionally, she suggests washing fruits and vegetables with a solution made up of four parts water and one part vinegar to kill bacteria and make them last longer.

The City of Austin also has a list of resources for residents and businesses to reduce food waste on a local level. Businesses can start a food donation or composting program, and individuals living in the city limits can compost their own food scraps with the Curbside Composting Collection program.

Other grassroots efforts to reduce food waste and fight food insecurity include the ATX Free Fridge project, which operates seven free fridges throughout Austin; and Keep Austin Fed, a local organization that "rescue[s] thousands of meals each month, feeding hundreds of our neighbors living with food insecurity."

Dozens of Austin restaurants, supermarkets, convenient stores, cafés, and more can also be found on the To Good To Go app, where users can purchase leftover prepared foods at discounted prices.