Almost 40% of Food in USA Is Thrown Away<\/strong><\/p>\nBack in Southington, Quantum Biopower is finding innovative alternatives to sending food waste to landfills and incinerators. But the solutions to garbage disposal, in Connecticut and elsewhere, are still daunting. \u00a0Connecticut currently ships 60% of its garbage out-of-state for disposal. At the same time, some 38% of all the food produced in the United States is thrown away, and that number is climbing.<\/p>\n
Quantum Biopower accepts up to 140 tons of food waste a day. The food-recycling facility not only benefits the environment, it also reduces disposal costs for businesses and municipalities. The energy it generates is helping power the police station, firehouse, and other Southington town offices.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe moved forward with a lot of determination, we helped shape government policy and, above all, we believed in the mission to unleash the value of food waste and provide an alternative to landfills and incineration,\u2019\u2019 Paganini says.<\/p>\n
Sustainability is ripe with opportunity for those who are interested, Paganini says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope the students and young alumni leave the summit with the notion that climate change and green infrastructure is no longer \u2018nice to do\u2019 but, rather, something that we need to do for society,\u2019\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
There are regulatory and market dynamics that are driving clean-energy technology to develop faster. That has gotten the attention of big companies, like Walmart and Target, and led to green energy and infrastructure becoming more mainstream, Paganini says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last 24 months, sustainability has become baked into the culture of companies,\u2019\u2019 Paganini says.<\/p>\n
Paganini says Connecticut, and other states, have passed advanced food-waste diversion mandates and are reaping the benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a region, we\u2019re getting there. The next frontier is residential, curb-side collection of food scraps. Connecticut will lead that shift on the East Coast, and within the next three years that\u2019s going to change the food-waste dynamic dramatically,\u2019\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo students I say \u2018If you want to make bold changes, it won\u2019t be easy. Surround yourself with capable and like-minded folks and anything is possible,\u2019 \u2019\u2019 Paganini says. \u201cThere is room for new ideas and innovations. I\u2019m extremely optimistic about the future. We will have more new infrastructure and better policies. We\u2019re just now scratching the surface.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Arminda Kamphausen, Director for Global & Sustainability Initiatives at the UConn School of Business, says the annual summit welcomes everyone from sustainability novices to experts. Many of those in attendance have remarked about the excitement of meeting future collaborators.<\/p>\n
\u201cOrganizing this event every year is a wonderful opportunity to work with amazing students, faculty, alumni and business professionals, committed to using their knowledge and skills in business for good,\u2019\u2019 she says. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to welcome President Maric, whose commitment to having UConn be a clean-energy contributor, both locally and nationally, is inspiring, as well as our other outstanding panelists.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March 1 Sustainability Summit, features President Radenka Maric, other industry experts, changemakers; registration now open<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":209519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2471,2460,2193,1862,2387,2235,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2105],"class_list":["post-209516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-economic-development","category-faculty","category-hartford-county","category-busn","category-sustainability","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 09:39:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209521,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209516\/revisions\/209521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/209519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209516"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=209516"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=209516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}