"Food waste is like the band Rascal Flatts: It can fill a surprising number of football stadiums, even though many people consider it complete garbage," said John Oliver. In the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Food Waste (HBO), John Oliver discusses how much food Americans waste. He expresses how he is appalled and disgusted at the amount of food being wasted for various unacceptable reasons. Oliver makes a point to say that it’s not only affecting the hungry, but also the producers, consumers, and sellers. I do agree that Americans are wasting food because I and my family, waste a lot of food.
According to the National Resources Defense Council, “40% of the food produced in the U.S. never gets eaten.” Americans throw away 165 billion worth of food every year which when calculated is about 20 pounds per person …show more content…
It’s over 30 million tons of food waste that the U.S. sends to the landfills each year. Organic materials such as food scraps and yard trimmings are broken down by bacteria to produce methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas and is shown to have a warming potential of 21 times that of carbon dioxide. Almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills where organic matter accounts for 16 percent of U.S. methane emissions. We need to reduce methane emissions to the atmosphere. "When we dump food into a landfill, we're essentially throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and Dutch-Ovening the entire planet," said John Oliver.
Many things can affect the way consumer’s shop that contributes to food waste. For example, when my mother is hungry and haven’t eaten all day and decides to go grocery shopping, she often picks up excessive food because she is hungry. With that being said, she ends up paying about $200 or $300 for grocery. Half of what she brought just sits in the refrigerator and spoils. This is wasting food and losing money at the same
According to the National Resources Defense Council, “40% of the food produced in the U.S. never gets eaten.” Americans throw away 165 billion worth of food every year which when calculated is about 20 pounds per person …show more content…
It’s over 30 million tons of food waste that the U.S. sends to the landfills each year. Organic materials such as food scraps and yard trimmings are broken down by bacteria to produce methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas and is shown to have a warming potential of 21 times that of carbon dioxide. Almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills where organic matter accounts for 16 percent of U.S. methane emissions. We need to reduce methane emissions to the atmosphere. "When we dump food into a landfill, we're essentially throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and Dutch-Ovening the entire planet," said John Oliver.
Many things can affect the way consumer’s shop that contributes to food waste. For example, when my mother is hungry and haven’t eaten all day and decides to go grocery shopping, she often picks up excessive food because she is hungry. With that being said, she ends up paying about $200 or $300 for grocery. Half of what she brought just sits in the refrigerator and spoils. This is wasting food and losing money at the same