Food Waste Reduction
“Imagine walking out of a grocery store with four bags of groceries, dropping one in the parking lot, and not bothering to pick it up. That’s essentially what we’re doing in our homes today.“ – Dana Gunders, Natural Resources Defense Council
How much food are we wasting?
Every year in the United States, almost 40% of all food produced goes uneaten. 95% of that goes straight into landfills. This includes millions of tons of preventable wasted food that was served but not eaten, spoiled food, unharvested crops, and “ugly food”. Wasted food is excessive, expensive, and environmentally harmful. Food waste costs our nation $166 billion every year which amounts to $1,500 a year for a family of four! We are feeding our landfills almost as much as we feed ourselves while 1 in 8 Americans are food-insecure, which means they don’t have consistent access to enough food to meet their basic needs.
Environmental impacts of food waste
- When food is wasted, all of the resources used to produce that food is also wasted.
- 8% of US agricultural land is used to produce the food that gets wasted!
- 25% of all freshwater in the US is used to produce food that is thrown away!
- Food waste also has a carbon footprint – Most uneaten food goes to the landfills where it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 24 times more environmentally harmful than CO2
Fight Food Waste!
There are some simple steps you can take to reduce your food waste!
- Shop your kitchen- use up the food you already have before you buy more.
- Plan ahead- shop with meals in mind, have a plan for everything you buy at the grocery store.
- Create an “eat first” section in your refrigerator.
- Freeze what you can’t eat.
- Commit to eating all the food you buy!
- After reducing your food waste, compost what you can’t eat!