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.
Yesterday we talked about the fact that Americans throw out nearly half of the food they buy. The worst thing about this is that one in seven Americans – over 46 million people – don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
We recently talked about the problem of food waste on this program, in particular, the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted around the world each year. This is a tragic situation given how many people around the world don’t have enough to eat.