Strategically Communicating

Story Selected from NPR News: Creative Distillers Tackle Food Waste, Redefining ‘Getting Trashed’ by Jodi Helmer.

A California distillery is using food waste to create premium vodka and brandy. They receive 1200 pounds of baked goods from the local food bank per week and two pounds of food waste is needed to make a single bottle of vodka. The US disposes of 133 billion pounds of food per year, and among that a third of fruits and vegetables grown end up as food waste.

I shared the story with my mom (via phone call), my husband (face-to-face), my roommate (via Facebook) and a former coworker (via email). To frame up the story for my mom I started by talking about my Imperfect Produce order and then went into the news story. When bringing it up to my husband I talked about how the distillery was working directly with farmers and the food bank to catch food waste at the source, but our conversation eventually moved on to California farm inefficiencies. With my roommate we ended up talking about how the product would taste. And when I emailed my coworker there wasn’t an opportunity for conversation, I just shared with them a cool story about sustainability.

When framing the story to each person I highlighted the details I felt would most be interesting to them without losing the overall message of the story. I also opted to choose a story that wouldn’t insight political or social tensions and be relatable enough to enter everyday conversation.