The Role Of Food Waste In The United States

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.

The USDA claims that each year, 25.9 million tons of America’s food is thrown away, the equivalent to a quarter of the total amount produced. Nationally, the wasted food is a damaging financial setback, amounting to $1 billion just to get rid of during a time of ascending food prices, nonetheless (Oliver, 2007). Food waste has skyrocketed since 1970 at an astonishing 50% increase rate, yet according to the FAO, one-sixth of America doesn’t get enough to eat.

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.

Throughout the United States millions of people starve every day; at the other end of the spectrum millions of people waste thousands of tons of food a day. This is a dilemma that young adults are trying to correct. The problem that lies in front of them, involves the waste from colleges. College students continue to combat each other. Some colleges in the United States use the food they waste to create energy or compost for local crops. While others do nothing to help the environment and don’t are about sustainability. “‘If anyone is going to reverse the trend of food waste, it's millennials,’ says Dana Gunders at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. ‘They care, they're just starting to form their food habits and they're opened

I have been doing research on food waste in Athens, Ohio. The goal of my research is to find a plausible solution to the waste. To begin the gathering of information, I searched through the Ohio University ArticlesPlus Database to find any journals that I could find pertaining to the state of America’s food waste, how we can make a difference, and what has already been implemented to make a change. This was my way of looking at the amount of food wasted from a bigger perspective. I found four sources on the issue as a whole, to which I have included in my annotated bibliography. All sources have a primary focus on statistics of food waste in America, and finding a solution to the problem that we have created. The statistics

Have you ever thought food waste is a really severe problem? I think food waste is a big problem because a lot of families are without food and I don’t want families to starve. Up to forty percent of food in the United States is wasted. Also one in eight families struggle to put food on the table. Article two. Sixty-two million tons of food is wasted every year. Globally up to one-third of all food is spoiled. Article one. Food waste is the biggest occupant in America's landfills. 160 billion dollars is wasted on food waste. Article three.

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).

Every year in the United States and around the world many billions of pounds of food are wasted. Roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown    away—some 60 million tons (or $160 billion). People are unable to get enough food for themselves and their families.

Fourteen percent of American households don’t know where their next meal will come from. That means if you had ten people in a room, one-two of them would be scared for what they’re going to eat that night. Those are sad odds, right? But even more depressing, twenty-five million people could be fed each year if we threw away only fifteen percent less of food than what we normally carelessly toss in the trash can. The concept of saving food is easier said than done. I’m not saying that everybody should always ship their half-eaten PB&J to needy orphans in Brazil, but we certainly do pitch more food than we used to. America is in a constant struggle with food waste.

In this summary I will briefly explain the entirety of my senior project essay which has to do with food waste. I will talk about four major sections in which I divided my senior project into to help me write it. First was how much food is wasted not just here in the U.S. alone, but the world in general, second describes the negative affects food waste has in the world, third explains and gives reasons why some of this food goes to waste, and finally the final section gives the reader information on how we as individuals and as a nation combined can reduce the amount of food waste.

People have been wasting food from the time humans started to exist. Everyone needs to eat, but people don’t necessarily consume everything that is on their plate. Food waste, however, is a bigger problem than ever before, with people from the middle and upper class having a great abundance of food, while others are starving to death all over the world. Stopping food waste is important, since it leads to many environmental problems, while increasing the size of our landfills. Food and organic waste is a problem in our world, today and in the past.

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.

1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year on the planet, which means that almost half of the food production in the entire world is wasted each year. Food waste appears when food products are being thrown away without having been consumed by anyone. Thus, food wastes can arise directly from the consumer’s house, whenever people forget to eat the food and it starts to rot and they are obliged to throw it, or it may be a result of food losses during the production and transportation processes. In addition, over 30% of the fruits and vegetables in North America are not even displayed in grocery stores because they are not pretty enough. Food waste represents a major issue in today’s world where, inter alia, climate changes are noticeable and

Visit any landfill in the United States, and you are sure to find items whose useful lives have not yet been exhausted, and materials that could be turned into other products. Wasted resources in our landfills take up space that is becoming increasingly limited, and also have a negative impact on the overall health of the planet. In 2013, a King County Waste Characterization study showed that 72 percent of what is thrown out can be recycled. Of that 72 percent, the largest

There are countless issues that pose danger to the environmental health of the Earth, but one of the most often overlooked problems is food waste. Food waste contributes to droughts as well as other serious economic and climate ramifications. However, there are many things that can be done to resolve this pressing issue.