Equipping communities to upcycle food waste with insect allies

Roughly one quarter of US land is devoted to agriculture, while over one third of the food we produce ultimately goes to landfills, representing an unthinkable waste. These lost nutrients could be returned to our food systems with the help of insect allies that naturally decompose and upcycle food waste into useful products. The manure of the insects can be applied to cropland as a soil amendment shown to increase yield and decrease some pest species, and the insects themselves can be harvested to be a protein source in animal feed. The goal is to increase food security for the future while reducing food waste in the present. A key step toward realizing this goal is to equip communities with knowledge and experience to partner with insects to recapture lost food and transform it into animal feed and soil amendments. Here, we propose to: 1) demonstrate insect-based food waste upcycling in the urbanized Northeast US, 2) develop insect-based waste upcycling educational content and a mobile application for dissemination and data gathering, and 3) partner with local organizations while deploying the mobile application, document food waste diversion, 
and assess user experiences. Our goal is that waste upcycling would be accessible to any household or organization that is committed to keeping food in the food system. While there will be nuances to how the process is implemented across the diverse geographies of the US, demonstration and education in the urbanized Northeast US is an important step toward reducing food loss and waste on a national scale.