Eco-challenge regarding food actions continues through Oct. 28

Delmarva Green member congregations Epworth United Methodist Church, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Seaside Jewish Community and Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware have formed the Delmarva Green Earth Stewards team to fight climate change by asking people to rethink some of their actions around food.

People sign up to join the team and select as many food actions as they want to undertake, getting points for the team when they complete each one. Examples include reducing meat consumption, cooking with zero waste, watching a food documentary, and buying from local farmers markets.

To sign up, go to ecochallenge.org, click on join and search for Delmarva Green Earth Stewards.

Eating less meat saves money, since vegetables, fruits, grains and beans generally cost less than meat. It reduces risk of getting diseases like Type 2 diabetes, obesity and heart disease, and reduces blood pressure. Reducing meat consumption decreases greenhouse gas emissions and cuts back on use of land, water and energy.

Food waste is the No. 1 contributor to landfills by weight. Ways food is wasted include leaving entire fields unharvested, rejecting produce because of the way it looks, serving larger portions than needed or edible, and letting food rot in the refrigerator. Wasted food produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 37 million cars.

Every year, American consumers, businesses, and farms spend $218 billion, or 1.3 percent of the nation’s GDP, growing, processing, transporting and disposing of uneaten food. Meanwhile, 42 million Americans face food insecurity, and less than one-third of the food people throw out would be enough to feed this population completely. Roughly a third of the world's food is never eaten, which means land and resources used and greenhouse gases emitted in producing it were unnecessary.

Each person has a foodprint, meaning the environmental impact of the food one purchases, including the amount of land required to sustain a diet, the amount of carbon dioxide produced, whether the food is organic, and whether it is local.