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According to the USDA, 30-40% of all food supply in the US gets thrown away uneaten. In 2010, this added up to $161 billion worth of food.
Food is one of the most visible examples of unequally distributed resources – while in countries such as the US and most of Europe, food is abundant to the point where much of it gets thrown away uneaten, there are still areas of the world where people have nothing to put on their plates. This discrepancy makes wasted food a moral issue.
Here are 10 Mindful Tips And Tricks To Reduce Your Kitchen Waste and A Beginners Guide To Sustainable Living And 3 Easy Tips On How To Begin.
However, besides that, there are also many devastating environmental consequences to food waste which aren’t discussed nearly as often as they should be – which is why we’ve made them the focus of today’s article. We’ll also give you some tips on how you can play your part in reducing food waste.
It takes a lot of time, water, soil, labour and crops (in the case of animal products) to produce food. By throwing food away, we are wasting all of these resources. Although this is problematic in all cases, it’s especially troubling in the case of meat and other animal products, which have a higher carbon footprint and take more resources to produce. For example, if a kilogram of cheese is thrown away, it means that the 5,605 litres of water used to produce it have been wasted.
However, while some foods take more resources to produce than others, it is essential that we reduce all food waste – because the wasted resources are not the only problem.
Any food waste sent to landfill is contributing to climate change. That is because it lacks access to oxygen, cannot decompose properly and produces methane – a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent in the short run than CO2. If the food waste is composted instead, it can degrade properly, and this issue is eliminated. However, many people don’t have this option or are simply unaware of it. In fact, you may only be finding out about the environmental impact of food waste from this article.
Without this knowledge, many of us go for years without thinking twice about sending food waste to landfill – we mistakenly assume that just because something is compostable, it will compost under any conditions, even in a landfill, which is simply not true.
When we speak of sustainability, our minds always focus on environmental sustainability first – however, economic and social sustainability is also important if we hope to promote sustainable development worldwide.
As we mentioned in the introduction, the amount of food waste going to our landfills is economically and socially unsustainable, because people in some areas don’t have the privilege of refusing food – because they don’t even have access to the basics. Large amounts of money are also needed to produce this food which, along with the other resources, goes to waste when food ends up in a landfill.
Most of our food is wasted at the consumer level – after we purchase it. In the US, an average household throws away $2,275 worth of food every year! This means that we are the problem – but it also signals that we can be the solution.
There are many different ways you can reduce your impact on the environment by reducing the amount of food waste your household produces. Here are a few of our favorites, which you may find useful:
Food waste is a serious environmental issue we should be paying more attention to. Besides being a waste of resources used to produce the food, it also contributes to climate change when said food waste is sent to landfill rather than composted. From a social and economic point of view, food waste is also problematic because people in some countries are wasting perfectly good food while those in other areas lack access to the basics.
Thankfully, we can make a big difference by taking some steps to reduce our individual contribution to this environmental issue. Meal planning, freezing leftovers to save them for later, not over-buying, and composting any food scraps are four great ways to make a change.
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