Food Wastage In America Essay

America is facing a food crisis. 40% of food in the United States goes uneaten, while simultaneously, one in six Americans does not have nutrition necessary for survival (Gunders 4). Producing this food uses energy, land, water, and other materials, only to end up in landfills. Something needs to be done to prevent this food wastage and its negative effects. With so much riding on the issue, a question needs to be addressed: to what extent can food wastage be utilized in America to benefit humanity and the environment? This question is important to address due to substantial implications to the economy, Earth, and ultimately every person living in the United States. First, trends in food waste and availability and changing solutions worldwide can be explored through a historical perspective. The Institute of Waste Management’s Felicitas Schneider, with expertise in waste logistics and prevention, discusses this in her article “The History of Food Wastage.” According to the source,some preservation techniques were developed by the medieval times, but overall most European people “lived from hand to …show more content…
The rest is dumped into landfills. Food is currently one of the municipal waste’s largest components reaching landfills, and this food breaks down into methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more detrimental to climate change than carbon dioxide. Also, due to their organic nature and high moisture content, this food breaks down and produces methane at a higher rate than other organic materials. This effect is so powerful that if all food scraps are removed from landfills in the UK, “the level of greenhouse gas reduction would be equivalent to removing one fifth of all cars” in the country from the streets (Gunders 14). A similar impact on America would be tremendous. Through this data, it’s clear by diverting food waste from landfills, we can substantially impact climate