Food Waste Consumption In The United States

Food waste causes a large amount of environmental issues. These are caused by the loss of natural resources which are in the production of food.

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).

While everyone may love to go out and enjoy a fine meal with friends and family, most will never stop to think the process of how the food came about, or the production thereof. John Oliver’s piece on “Food Waste” outlines all the problems of food waste and how they can impact society, animals, nature, and even the farmers who harvest the produce. America and its businesses should try to decrease the amount of food being wasted. By doing so, not only are we a contributing factor to help reduce waste, save time and money, but we are also aiding the less-fortunate in a society, while still saving natural resources and the planet as a whole.

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.

Although some people are not aware of this problem, generating food is quite expensive, because it wastes energy, fresh water and natural resources during its growth, package and delivering. Furthermore, some scientists have found that decomposing uneaten food produces high levels of methane emissions. The world's population is growing extremely fast. As a result, if humans keep on wasting food at the same pace as today, the waste of generating food will increase proportionally, (Kruszelnicki, 2012).

“Globally, we throw out about 1.3 billion tons of food a year, or a third of all the food that we grow” (Sengupta). In the United States 33% is from agriculture, 11% from postharvest, 10% from processing, 8% from retail, and 39% from consumption. Consumers are the majority of our waste, but there's not a lot of ways to prevent this.

Food Waste has become a serious issue in Canada, one which needs to be addressed and resolved. $31 billion tonnes of food get thrown away each year, around 47% of food waste is from in home use, 53% of goof waste is from food be produced, processed, transported, sold, and prepared. The organic waste is then dumped into landfill where it undergoes the decomposition, and is used to create methane, which is 25x more damaging to the environment then carbon dioxide. The strange thing is there is many different solutions to food waste! It really takes little effort to go a long way in this situation, I want to make every aware and show how simple preventing food waste can be.

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.

Food is simply too good to waste. And while the loss of some food is inevitable, the amount of food Americans waste everyday has reached an all time high, and still continues to grow. The process by which food is produced uses 10% of the national energy budget, 50% of U.S. land, and 80% of the freshwater in the United States. (Gunders, 2012). Yet, 40% or 133 billion pounds of the food grown in this country goes to waste every year (Buzby, 2014). Reducing food losses by just 15% would be enough to feed more than 25 million Americans every year, when one in six Americans lack a secure supply of food to their tables (Gunders, 2012). Schools are one of the largest contributors to plate waste. A study by Richard Cohen reveals that plate waste accounts

This waste is not just concerned with taking up space but also how it contributes to global warming. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “food leftovers are the single-largest component of the waste stream by weight in the United States” (Reducing Food Waste, 2013). Food waste sources includes uneaten food and food preparation scraps from households, restaurants and cafeterias. “Over twelve percent of the total municipal solid waste generated in American households was food scraps and less than three percent was recovered. The rest was thrown away and disposed in landfills or combusted in incinerators” (Martin, 2008).

Trash. What is considered trash? Trash, is a subjective term. For some, it’s the whole, “waste not, want not”, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, etc. We’ve all heard these age old adages, but how much do we, as concerned Americans truly take this to heart when it comes to food waste? Some may argue that an expiration date is some magical sign to throw food away, which, does have some truth to it. No one wants to eat food that’s expired, and therefore, will make one sick. However, as a nation, America contributes to food waste by holding a staggering forty percent of the world’s food waste total (Flick). If America contributes to almost half of the world’s food waste, then it stands to reason that America is the most

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.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food wastage, “food produced and not eaten,” emits enough greenhouse gasses (GHG) to be ranked third amongst global emitters (FAO 2013, 6). In New York City (NYC) it is estimated that businesses “produce more than 650,000 tons of food waste annually” (Turso 2017). This specific food waste is classified as food scrap, cooked food which is still edible, but no longer useful to the business due to a myriad of reasons. Whatever the reason may be for the company, this tonnage of food has the potential and possibility of being recovered for redistribution to food banks, soup kitchens, and other food rescue organizations. For example, two of the largest organizations in NYC, City Harvest and Food Bank NYC, will collect around 59 million and 24 million pounds in 2017 respectively, of unprocessed/non-perishable food. This is equivalent to about 42 thousand tons or 6.5 percent of annual food waste from scraps. Despite having warehouses, fleets of vehicles, and numerous volunteers, two of the largest organizations barely make an impact on the total amount of food rescued versus food wasted.

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

The amount of waste created by the citizens of Earth cannot be sustained at the current rate of consumption and production. Together, the world generates 2.9 trillion pounds of waste of just food alone (Garfield, Gould, & Insider, 2016). The more developed countries, like the United States, generate ten times as much waste as underdeveloped countries like Saharan Africa. Land degradation, declining soil fertility, unsustainable water use, overfishing and marine environment degradation are all lessening the earth’s ability to supply food (Nino & Intern, 2016). Because of its adverse impact on agronomic productivity, the environment, and its effect on food security and the quality of life, land degradation will remain an important global issue for the 21st century (RecyclingWorks Massachusetts, 2016). With a growing population and a rising demand for water, society needs to carefully monitor its consumption and use (Harvey, 2015). Next, the marine environment is suffering because of society 's inability to reasonably consume Earth’s resources. Lastly, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. hospitals generate about 170,000 tons of food waste annually (Scannell, 2015). Programs are being put in place to minimize the amount of wasted food in hospitals while helping people who cannot afford food. Therefore, the way in which resources are irresponsibly used and produced need to be altered in order for Earth’s resources to be kept sustainable for decades