Austin residents and businesses are pitching in to put their leftovers to good use. And there are plenty to go around: Austin annually wastes more than 190 million pounds of food, worth at least $200 million.

Those numbers are big, but they’re not out of line with national trends—some 40 percent of food in the nation goes to waste. Put in plain terms, that’s enough to fill a 90,000-seat stadium each day. (Read about how food waste adds up.)

Austin is aiming for “zero waste”—a 90 percent reduction of materials sent to landfills and incinerators—by 2040, a goal set by a handful of other U.S. cities.

As part of that initiative, a new ordinance requires large-scale restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels to