Many people wonder how much food is actually wasted each year in the United States. In the article, How Much Food do We Waste Every Year? written by Casey Chan, he reveals facts about the percentages of food that are wasted by certain groups and businesses each year in a video produced by Visually. Approximately $165 billion is spent on wasted food each year in the United States; 6 percent of which is wasted by grocery stores, 15 percent is produced by restaurants and bakeries, and 25 percent is produced from the average person household. That may be a large number, but if American’s were to save just 15 percent of all of the food wasted, it would be able to feed 25 million starving people in the United States (Chan, 2013).
With increasing
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A reason why many restaurants and bakeries would probably be willing to do this is because many restaurants and bakeries throw their leftover baked goods away at the end of the night,because they want to serve fresh prepared food from the same day and not serve food from the day before. However, some may not know that food service establishments are also protected by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of …show more content…
The average household wastes a total of 25 percent of the total $165 billion wasted on food each year in the United States. One of the biggest reasons why there is so much food waste from the average household is because many people over buy when they go to the grocery store. According to Chan (2013), More than half of all of the food produced ends up being wasted and the majority of that ends up in the landfills.
The reason there is so much food in the household wasted is because when American grocery shop, they buy more food than what their family needs or will eat. This act results in food not being eaten in time, then having to get thrown away and wasted. It is stated that 16 percent of methane emissions produced by landfills are just from foods that have been thrown away (Chan, 2013). There are many things that the people in the United States could do to help decrease the amount of food that is wasted each year. One of the things that the average household can do to help decrease the amount of waste produced is by decreasing the amount of food that is purchased at a time. This would greatly decrease the amount of waste produced by people because the less that is bought, the less food that is likely to be thrown out. People in the U.S. have a tendency to over buy when they go
States alone, 30% of all food is thrown away each year. That's about 161 billion dollars worth of
The book, American Wasteland: How American Throw Away Nearly Half of Its Food, written by Jonathan Bloom, deeply describes the situation of food waste in America. The author, Bloom, starts off the book by mentioning that each day America squanders enough food tone fill up the Rose Bowl, the football stadium in Pasadena, California (xi). Bloom even brings out a specific number to prove that how much food were wasted in the United States, which is 160 billion pounds annually (xii). From that description and figure, we can see that food waste problem is really serious today.
Food Waste is a major issue in the United States. It takes up much needed room in landfills, it is a financial burden, and it contributes to the rise in hunger.
The University of Arizona’s “Garbage Project” study approximates the number closer to 50% when calculating in the 27 million tons thrown away by supermarkets, restaurants, and convenient stores alone adding up to an additional $30 billion. Retailers refuse to report their waste in compliance with company policy and food is sent to compactors where it becomes unusable and ends up in landfills. Globally, the FAO has declared approximately one-third of the world’s entire food supply produced for consumer consumption (1.3 billion tons) is wasted annually (Buzby & Hyman et al., 2012). Jean C. Buzby describes the entire lifecycle of food (including food waste) having “negative externalities that arise throughout the
With the seemingly unstoppable growth of the world’s population and a projected global population of nine billion by 2050, the matter of whether or not there will be enough food to support the world’s populace is brought into question (Parfitt, et al., 2010). However, amid the concern for an adequate food supply, there is an immense amount of food waste produced by the world, including the United States. In fact, “according to the Natural Resources Defense Council as much as 40 percent of all food produced in the United States never gets eaten and typically ends up in the landfills or goes unharvested in the field “(King, 2015).
There is enough food waste in America to fill up 730 football stadiums. Yet, ironically there were almost 50 million people who live in households that are food-insecure in 2013. Thus, it is critically important to help reduce (or at the very least reevaluate) the amount of food that is wasted so it can be used to help those who can’t always afford it, or, help to reduce the impact of methane released by landfills, or, help to use less resources gone into making the produce.
Food waste is an environmental, economic, and ethical problem that can lead to less calorie intake and unnecessary damage of our assets. Individual behavior can redesign food waste at home and lead to bigger changes in the ecosystem. The problem is Americans throw out more food than glass, paper, and plastic. Also about 25% of food grown, processed, and transported in the US will never be consumed. When food is disposed in a landfill it rots and becomes a significant source of methane— a potent greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Americans account for only five percent of the world’s population, but create half of the globe’s solid waste. Americans toss out the equivalent of $165 billion in food each year. All of that time, energy, and freshwater- for nothing. How can the United States, being so small in number, produce so much waste? Brad Plumer from the Washington Post documented a recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council that attempts to track America’s food, from “farm to fork.” Plumer breaks the report down into seven different wasteful places along the American food production line: Farming, post-harvest and packing, processing and distribution, retail and grocery stores, food service and restaurants, households, and disposal.
Looking at the Impacts of Food Waste, In general by wasting food that’s mean we are wasting our money but in different way. . At the same time it is impacting us financially it’s also playing a huge role in the problems we see happening to our environment. The US Environment Protection Agency said, “Generating food waste has significant economic as well as environmental consequences. Whether you’re an individual, family, or business, chances are a considerable portion of your budget goes towards buying food — either for you, your family, or your customers. And since we now throw away more food than anything else, that means we are throwing away a lot of our money.” (“Basics,” par. 2) They went on to say that wasting food does more than impact our economy; it also impacts our environmental severely. We need to look at other countries and see what they’re doing with their food waste mistakes and do them same in our country the
Why is there so much food being wasted ? “Outdated foods, damaged and out of season items from supermarkets, collectively known as “unsaleables”, are sent to large clearing houses known as reclamation centers. These are most often operated by the supermarket chains themselves or wholesale distributors. Here, dangerous items such as broken jars and obviously contaminated or spoiled foods are disposed of. The remainder is sold into the salvage industry or donated to food banks.”(Arumugam) “A huge percent of food waste could be mitigated if more Americans were willing to buy bananas with brown spots, or if they understood they can eat yogurt two weeks after its sell by date.”( Harrison) Many people believe that you can’t eat something after its sell by date. The sell by date is for the store they can’t sell it after that time
Food waste is defined as food that can be consumed but for whatever reason goes uneaten. It was first addressed in 1977 when a report was sent to congress from the General Accounting Office. Within the report the United States Department of Agriculture’s role in food waste as well as several other aspects of food waste such as pollution and growing populations are still relevant today were spoken of (Buzby et al. 1). However in the years following the publication of this report, food waste has not lessened and instead has exponentially worsened from twenty percent in 1977 to forty percent as of 2012 (Finn et al.
There are billions of people struggling every day to have enough to eat, and billions of tons of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is gaining increasing awareness as a serious environmental and economic issue. Research shows that about 60 million metric tons of food is wasted a year in the United States, with an estimated value of $162 billion. About 32 million tons of it end up in landfills, at a cost of about $1.5 billion a year to local government this economic crisis is worldwide! My research estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high as $400 billion a year. The food discarded by retailers and consumers in the most developed countries would be more than enough to feed all of the world’s hungry people, but it is not just those countries that have problems with food waste, it is also an issue in African countries like South Africa. The problem is expected to grow worse as the world’s population increases, unless actions are taken to reduce the waste. Food waste is not only a social cost, but it contributes to growing environmental problems like global warming, experts say, with the production of food consuming vast quantities of water, fertilizer and land. The fuel that is burned to process, refrigerate and transport it also adds to the environmental cost. Most food waste is thrown away in landfills, where it decomposes and emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Wasting food is a bad habit that affects all of society and we continue to implicate ourselves in the problem. Of the total of food loss that is going on about 40 percent is in the household. Overall a typical household of four loses about 600 dollars in food a year. (Jones 11)
There are billions of people struggling every day to have enough to eat, and billions of tons of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is gaining increasing awareness as a serious environmental and economic issue. Research shows that about 60 million metric tons of food is wasted a year in the United States, with an estimated value of $162 billion. About 32 million tons of it end up in landfills, at a cost of about $1.5 billion a year to local government this economic crisis is worldwide! My research estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high as $400 billion a year. The food discarded by retailers and consumers in the most developed countries would be more than enough to feed all of the world’s hungry people, but it is not just those countries that have problems with food waste, it is also an issue in African countries like South Africa. The problem is expected to grow worse as the world’s population increases, unless actions are taken to reduce the waste. Food waste is not only a social cost, but it contributes to growing environmental problems like global warming, experts say, with the production of food consuming vast quantities of water, fertilizer and land. The fuel that is burned to process, refrigerate and transport it also adds to the environmental cost. Most food waste is thrown away in landfills, where it decomposes and emits methane, a potent
In America, we are constantly surrounded by abundance. Food is a prevalent waste item in the United States. Most people do not think about the resources it took to produce, transport, and prepare the food they throw away. Our food waste is not actually just trash; it is the key to human survival. Ordinary consumers can change the future with one small action: to stop wasting food. Actions at the individual level can decrease food waste and feed those in need. Twenty five percent of purchased food is thrown away. (TED) Often this is because food has spoiled, but it can be for other reasons such as oversupply, misread labels, or individual consumer shopping and eating habits. http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf