Food Waste in America

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Many of us have probably enjoyed our favorite dishes at a warm and cozy Thanksgiving dinner by now, and we are likely headed back to the fridge for left overs. You look in the fridge and think "there literally is no more room in there, I hope we can eat all the leftovers before they go bad...."

You may get to them all, or you might not. It happens, you get so excited about this amazing once a year meal and make enough food for an army! But what will you do with the leftover you aren't able to consume after Thanksgiving? It is estimated that in America 30-40 percent of food supply is wasted each year. That is roughly 133 billion pounds of food!

This food is usually things that are still good enough to be eaten but is thrown out because it is outdated. Much of this food being wasted is by retail and consumer store businesses, but they are all stores that we shop at and buy food from. So for many of us, this might not apply directly. You may have a super leftover system in place that stretches your food supplies for weeks.

But is there more we as a community could be doing with the overall food waste? Absolutely there is! Here are a few ideas that I came up with:

• Often homeless people struggle to find good healthy food, even at shelters. Day old food could be given out to homeless people regularly by delivering the food restaurants and other retail food shops would normally throw out to shelters or directly to people on the streets.
• Let's face it, not even giving food to all the shelters will completely eliminate all the food waste ever, so whatever does end up at a landfill should be processed in food waste digesters to produce methane gas. This gas could be collected and sold back to consumers as a eco-friendly fuel source.
• The stigma of needing the freshest food could be eliminated. If the consumer doesn't demand the necessity for freshest possible, then providers will stop facilitating that need.

In conclusion, eliminating food waste comes down to pulling together as a community and acting on smart innovations. We need to be mindful of where all our consumer products go, not just our food. If we do our parts to generate a sustainable community, we will all be able to enjoy a better way of life.

- Chris Sommers

References: https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm