6TOP 5 WAYS TO WASTE
LESS FOOD AT HOME
A
ll told, more than 30 percent of all the food produced
around the world never gets eaten. In the United States,
it’s 40 percent. After going to all the trouble to produce
food, we’re actually sending it to landfills. Food scraps con-
tribute more volume to landfill than anything else. So, of all
the things you can possibly do to lower your carbon footprint,
wasting less food is by far one of the most effective. (The other
is eating less red meat.)
At the same time, 40 million Americans go hungry every
day. The problem isn’t producing enough food. In countries like
the United States, the biggest issue is retailer and consumer
tendencies, from over-buying and over-portioning to not being
OK with “running out” of certain things in home pantries or
on grocery shelves. Confusing “best by” dates don’t do us any
favors. If we could just distribute one-third of the food that
goes uneaten, it would feed all the food-insecure Americans
who desperately need it.
The reason you’re reading about this issue in the section
on stuff that comes from the ground is that globally the two
food categories most likely to be wasted are (1) fruits and veg-
etables and (2) roots and tubers. Some of our most nutritious
crops—squandered! Yes, even in the United States, some food
waste occurs on the farm or on its way to us: Produce got too
ripe or was deemed not pretty enough or not uniform enough
in size to be sold (so-called “ugly produce”). But nearly half of
the problem is on us. (Google “Your Plan, Your Planet,” a fun22 how to be a Conscious Eater