Cassie Bartholomew manages the food waste reduction project, which focuses on strategies of prevention, donation, and composting for commercial kitchens, school cafeterias, higher education, and residents. Cassie joined the agency in 2004, and managed our environmental education, Bay-Friendly school garden, and school composting programs. Cassie holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Masters in Teaching from the University of San Francisco.

What’s your favorite thing about working here?

It's exciting that we have the opportunity to do innovative work, and pilot new ideas and approaches to solving big environmental issues at a local scale. We work with a wide range of audiences—from businesses to schools and residents—testing different approaches and messaging that hopefully motivate people to change their behavior. We get in deep, whether it’s storing bananas correctly at home, or tracking food waste in an industrial kitchen to better understand food loss in operations. I am constantly learning and growing as a professional, which is really rewarding.

What do you do when you are not working?

I have two amazing children with busy and budding social lives. I volunteer at their schools, especially in the school garden, compost and recycling programs. At home, we just sheet-mulched and replaced our lawn with a drought-tolerant landscape for pollinators. I enjoy observing the new flora and fauna returning to our neighborhood. We have a dog - actually I am a total softy for animals. Animals in need of rescue seem to find me.

How do you practice what you preach?

I try to model for my kids the practices that I hope they will adopt. At home, we are attempting to be more mindful of how we shop, prep and store food to prevent wasted food. I live outside Alameda County and we don’t have access to curbside food scrap composting, so we compost our food scraps in our worm bins, which feed our veggie garden. My daughter recently tested different types of fruit and vegetable storage techniques for her 4th grade school science fair project, which was selected to represent her school at the district science fair.

What is the food waste prevention tip that you use most?

My kids are pretty good at eating salad, but they will eat even more with croutons! So as I'm making morning lunches, I cut up the heels of bread and put them in a paper bag on the counter to dry up. Then I pretty much follow the recipe on our Stop Food Waste website. It’s a great way to get them to eat their veggies and use up end and bits of bread.

Anything else we should know about you?

I'm really into animals and wildlife. Before working at StopWaste, I managed youth programs at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. Initially, I was drawn to mega-fauna like raptors but I soon became totally obsessed with insects and arachnids. One of the most memorable experiences of my life was traveling to the central highlands of Mexico to see first-hand the eastern monarchs migration to over wintering sites, and tagging monarchs with middle and high school students to track their migration in San Leandro. It was so cool!