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Recovering Food Waste

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Americans throw away billions of pounds of food each year, worth billions of dollars and enough to feed millions of people. In fact, according a recent report on food waste by Johns Hopkins University, if we were able to recover all of our wasted food, we could provide a 2,000-calorie diet to 84% of the population.  Our next guest’s university is working with a major South Carolina corporation on an initiative to address this issue.

Mike Switzer interviews Dr. Jeffery Rhodehamel, department chair and professor at the Department of Food, Nutrition, and Packaging Sciences at Clemson University.

The initiative: Sonoco FRESH.

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After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.