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Shielding From Food Waste

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Food waste is one of the most disheartening problems we face.  Fully one-third of all food produced globally for human consumption is wasted.  Fruits, vegetables and tubers are even worse off:  fully half of these things are wasted.  It is a loss at an economic, social and environmental level.

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Wasting Less Food

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We have talked about the problem of food waste before.  About 40% of the food produced in the United States goes to waste, which is a truly shameful statistic.  According to a Business for Social Responsibility study on the subject, about 44% of the food that goes into landfills comes from homes.  About a third comes from the food service industry.

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European Lessons On Food Waste

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Americans toss out an almost unbelievable $161 billion worth of food every year.  There are numerous efforts underway to address this problem, but they are mostly at the local level or in the business sector.   To date, we have no national- or international-level policies that tackle the issue.  In this regard, Europe is way ahead of us.

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Growing More Food On Less Land

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There are predictions that the world’s population could reach 10 billion by the year 2050.  Whether population growth can be slowed down enough to prevent this remains to be seen.  Regardless, it is clear that we need to figure out how to feed many more people than we have today and we are not even doing that good a job of feeding the current population.

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Food Waste And Wildlife

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We have talked quite a bit about food waste and in particular its impact on world hunger and on the economy.  The world wastes more than $750 billion worth of food each year and 1.6 billion tons of food is left in fields, sent to landfills or scattered about the landscape.  Another 7 million tons of fishery discards are dumped in the sea.

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Food Deserts

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A food desert is a geographic area – often an urban area – where affordable and nutritious food is difficult to obtain, particularly for those without access to an automobile.   Food deserts disproportionately affect occupants of poor, low-income neighborhoods where there are often no groceries stores or farmer’s markets.  These are places were food comes from convenience stores or fast-food chains.  More than 20 million Americans are thought to live in food deserts.

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Reducing Food Waste

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We have talked about food waste before.  It is a big problem in this country:  some 31% of our food supply is wasted, more than 130 billion pounds a year.  Food waste makes up 21% of solid waste in municipal landfills, which means that it accounts for the bulk of landfill methane emissions.  Methane is more than 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and landfills are a major source of it.

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WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)