Hello and welcome to Environmental Minute! This segment is brought to you by WDIY, in part by the Estate of Don Miles, and I am your host, Maddie Yang, a sophomore in high school at Moravian Academy, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I am super passionate about all things climate change, sustainability, and empowering and educating others to take action against the climate crisis. My goal for this segment is to provide listeners with a glimpse into a whole variety of topics in the vast realm of sustainability from biodiversity to ecotourism, and plant-based diets to sustainable swaps.
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about food waste, which is, in my opinion, one of the easiest climate issues to address, except not enough people take action for it.
In the United States particularly, we throw out the most food out of any other country in the world. While the world in total wastes about 2.5 billion tons per year, the United States wastes 120 billion pounds every year. This amount equates to roughly 40% of the US’s total food supply. Food actually takes up the greatest percentage of space in the US landfills compared to all other types of waste, making up 22% of municipal solid waste, and the cost of all of the food that Americans waste equates to roughly $218 billion dollars. When food is wasted, it’s not just the food itself that’s lost. It’s all the resources that went into growing, transporting, storing, and preparing it. Water, land, labor, fuel – all used for nothing. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the U.S. and China.
Furthermore, food that sits in landfills also produces nitrogen pollution, which can create algae blooms and dead zones. Approximately 43% of waste comes from homes, 40% comes from restaurants, grocery stores, and other food service companies, 15% from farms, and 2% from manufacturers.
The underlying issue to all of this is that nearly 35 million people across America, including 10 million children suffer from food insecurity. So why is it that so many Americans throw out food, while so many go hungry everyday? A large part of this issue are the expiration dates on food labels. More than 80% of Americans throw away perfectly edible food due to expiration date misunderstandings. Most people don’t know the difference between “best by”, “best before”, “sell by”, “expires on”, and “use by”, and will toss food to prevent illness. It’s second nature for most people to see the bananas on their countertop and immediately throw them out when they get a tad too spotty. Or when you go to the grocery store and forget that you already have a bag of spinach in your fridge, and end up having to throw a bag out because you can’t use it in time.
For grocery stores and restaurants, it’s often a matter of appearance. Any slightly misshapen or discolored produce immediately gets tossed, even if it's perfectly edible, and grocery stores love to overstock their shelves with heaping piles of fruits and veggies, which also means that a lot of it goes to waste. Restaurants also tend to serve massive portions, meaning that a lot of food goes uneaten.
So what can we do about this issue? The good news is that food waste is an issue that can easily be addressed at the consumer level.
Firstly, plan out your meals. Get into the habit of making a shopping list, and sticking to it to ensure that you get only what you need.
Secondly, start freezing more of your food! Those spotty bananas on your counter can easily be peeled and frozen to turn into smoothies or defrosted to make banana bread. The spinach I mentioned before can also be frozen and will easily defrost when added into soups, sauteed, or added to a smoothie with that frozen banana too.
Third – understand food labels. “Best buy,” “sell by,” “use by” – these don’t all mean the food is bad after that date. Often, it’s just a suggestion for peak quality, not safety. Use your senses – if it looks, smells, and tastes fine, it probably is. Perishable foods, such as leftovers should be discarded after seven days in the fridge, and kept out of the danger zone at 40 degrees to 140 degrees fahrenheit for more than 2 hours.
Lastly, if you are willing to go the extra mile, try composting! Even if you don’t have a garden, you should, a. start one, b. give your compost to a friend who does have a garden, or c. many cities have curbside composting pick up or communal bins, so do your own research!
Food waste is a big issue, but the solutions start small – right on our plates. So next time you’re about to toss those leftovers, ask yourself: can I repurpose this? Can I freeze it? Or better yet – can I eat it now?
Let’s stop feeding landfills and start feeding people – and our planet.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Environmental Minute, and I hope this conversation has inspired you to think more critically about the importance of food waste, and its crucial role in affecting climate change. Until next time, I’m Maddie Yang, and this has been Environmental Minute.
