We Throw Away 40% of Our Food While 40M People Go Hungry

In this episode of Messy Liberation's Everything is Political series, hosts Becky Mollenkamp and Taina Brown are joined by Erica Clahar (founder of Uni Feeds) and Gwen Nolan (founder of Mother Compost) to explore the deeply political world of waste — from food waste and hunger to environmental racism, composting access, and the planned obsolescence built into capitalism. If you've ever wondered why trash is a feminist issue, this conversation will make everything click.

In This Episode, We Get Into:
• How 40% of the U.S. food supply gets thrown away every year while 40 million people remain food insecure (and why that number is chronically under-reported)
• The origin stories of two women who saw a problem and built organizations to solve it, not monetize it
• Environmental racism in real time: why landfills, incinerators, and illegal dumping disproportionately harm Black and brown communities
• The Coldwater Creek landfill situation in St. Louis as a case study in who bears the burden of waste
• The Chester, PA incineration fight, and what it means that Pennsylvania's constitution guarantees the right to clean air and water
• Individual responsibility vs. corporate and government accountability, and why both matter, but not equally
• Planned obsolescence, consumer culture, and how capitalism designed our throwaway society on purpose
• Indigenous and collective wisdom as a model for a caretaking economy — and how white supremacist capitalism broke that relationship
• Practical things you can actually do: composting, freezing leftovers, buy-nothing challenges, and sharing with neighbors
• Why slowing down and making intentional choices might be the most radical act you can do right now

Resources Mentioned:
• Umi Feeds: https://umifeeds.org/
• Mother Compost: https://mothercompost.com/
• ReFed: https://refed.org/
• Feeding America: https://www.feedingamerica.org/
• Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR): https://ilsr.org/
• Drawdown: https://drawdown.org/
• "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://amzn.to/3Q0j5oG
• "The Serviceberry" by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://amzn.to/4u92BZG
• "Emergent Strategy" by adrienne maree brown: https://amzn.to/4fpltjr

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