Informative Essay: Facts About Food Waste

Improved Essays
Facts about Food Waste Many of us never think about what happens to the food that we leave on our plate. However, maybe we should. Do you realize that 113 billion pounds of food goes un-eaten every year? According to the USDA, that makes up 31% of all our food. Why is this happening? We are not using our scrap food as an asset. Instead, we are clogging up landfills while there are people and animals that are going hungry. According to the article “Five Tactics to reduce Food Waste” in Julys edition of Building Magazine this is a major problem. They are not just talking about large restaurants; other types of businesses with lots of employees are just as guilty when it comes to this issue. Even private homes can take steps to help correct this problem. It belongs to all of us. First, we have to start at the beginning …show more content…
Pigs, goats, chickens, and many other animals find our scrap food delicious and nutritious. By recycling the scraps that would normally be thrown away and wasted, we can lower our cost of the feed bill on the farm. This is a winner no matter how you look at it. Another process to eliminate our food waste is called anaerobic digestion. With this process, we are able to use organic waste in a way that creates energy including electricity. Renewable energy and soil amendment are just two of the positives of the Anaerobic Digestion method, according to the EPA. Finally, another way we can reduce our scrap food is a very old method known to farmers and gardeners all over the world…compost! You continually compile your leftovers and table scraps along with other food material into a container. Grass clippings, tea and coffee grinds also help to create the perfect mixture to place around your plants to increase their size and growth rates. Throw some red worms in and in no time, you will have the best and safest fertilizer for your plants that came right from your own

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    According to John Oliver, “Americans throw away $165 billion worth of food every year. That’s about 20 pounds per person every month” (“Last Week Tonight”). With all of those products, it would increasingly fill the landfill and harm the environment. As piles of food stack onto each other, the uneaten decomposing food would release methane, which is a colorless and odorless gas (Washington Post). The methane will eventually affect the global warming, and of course, humans too. Those decomposing food could range from candy to pork and beef. To imagine how much produce is squandered, say a woman is grocery shopping for her family. On her way home with four grocery bags, she dropped one without going back to pick it up (“Last Week Tonight”). This represents the amount of food produce that never gets eaten, but this is just a vivid image on a smaller scale. Thinking about the amount of food that never gets eaten for the millions of people, if not billions that live in America, the large scale seems horrendous, yet there are still the other half of the country with no food at…

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Each year, an estimated 70 billion pounds of food are wasted in America. We turn up our noses at a bruised apple, at a carton of milk that’s a few days past its expiration date, at unappetizing and overcooked broccoli. We sigh, say “Oh well,” and shrugging our shoulders, we throw perfectly edible food into the trash. Supermarkets dump out trays of slightly wilted kale, and they throw out the pallet of applesauce because cans on one side were damaged (never mind the cans on the other side that were still in perfect shape). Secure in our privilege, in our position as a wealthy country, we destroy food like a child destroys a Barbie. Of course, this is not just done for the fun of it. There are a number of reasons why we waste such excessive amounts of food.…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With that being said I have now watched my household’s food waste more carefully and seem to see it more everyday from others around me. One day I caught myself staring at a table next to mine at a restraunt thinking that was a waste of food. The table had 6 orders with each plate having about half their food still on it and a bowl of salad that they had asked for a refill on not even touched. I asked the waitress if there was any way to take it home or maybe to donate it some way but she said no it was against their policy to do…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Inspired by a forsaken orange that sat in a North Carolina parking lot, Jonathan Bloom wrote American Wasteland to examine the growing problem of food-waste in America. I think Bloom did a tremendous job by presenting this looming issue. His numerous anecdotes pertaining to food-waste creates an innate sense of relatability, which in turn direct readers’ attention to the statistical and logical presentations of the issue. This is an impressive feat because Bloom avoided coming off as preachy or judgmental in a book that attempts to raise awareness of something that general Americans have already decided it’s not important (xvi). As a result, Bloom’s systematic way of examining every aspect of America's habit of wasting food comes off as interesting…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Im2 Unit 2 Assignment

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages

    I started my light weight experiment at my own place. I bought a different bag for compost and for 3 days I did not throw any scrap food in trash. My scrap food consisted of Pizza, old pasta, fruits, tea leaves, banana peels, egg shells and coffee grounds. I did put all that material in a strong blender and blended it till it became fine. The last step was that I spread all the raw material in my garden with the help of a trowel. Since the entire process is happening within the soil, it would help the Mother Nature to decompose them faster by breaking all the scrap food into fine raw materials. This will help the garden to reap the rewards without any additional…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hello, everyone. Over the last few months our group has been working on : “the wasting of ugly produce.” After studying world hunger as a class, we focused in on food insecurity in Napa. We started with three topics, after a while our group decided on food waste. After confirming that food waste in Napa was a big factor in food insecurity, we originally wanted to learn about restaurant food waste. However, we learned that most restaurants in Napa have learned to use all of their food and not much is wasted, but food waste is still a problem. After doing even more research we found out that every year about six billion pounds of fruits and vegetables in the U.S. goes unharvested or unsold. We learned that it was because a majority of…

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Food waste is one of the biggest problems that affect the environment and wastes precious resources in Australia faces that needs to stop.…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It's truly important to take everything into consideration and actually take action to help prevent food waste in America. It is important to educate yourself and understand the importance of why people waste, how it affects the environment and how we can prevent food waste from happening in America. There are people who are out there starving and struggling to find their next meal every single day. Today, people are selfish and need to learn the importance of how food waste actually affects our environment and learn ways to help and prevent some of the food waste happening in your home, community and even all over America. I was not as aware of the amount of food that is being wasted in our world and after researching and learning how bad it can affect our environment and also the people who are suffering from starvation in our environment has made me more aware of the amount of food I am throwing away and has made me take little steps to help prevent food waste from happening in my own…

    • 1283 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This cost includes soil-testing, removal of the concrete slabs, a closed bin rotating composter, and a 1,000 sq. ft. greenhouse. This cost be could be recouped within 1 ½ years from avoiding the $11,505 a year fee associated with UIC’s current collection of food scraps and with sales of compost estimated at $2(low average for Chicago) for a 40 lb. bag. The calculation assumes a slow uptake of compost collection from 53 tons at year to 300 tons by 5 years. This is the estimated weight of food scraps collection from the hospitals and student centers. Cities can help institutions of a similar size pay for these with subsidies.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Food and water are two of the most important resources for everyone on the planet. No matter what part of the world people are living in, no matter what their income or living situation is everyone needs these two vital resources to live a healthy life. Unfortunately food is not given the respect that it deserves, as perfectly edible food is unnecessarily thrown out everyday. Whether it is being thrown away at supermarkets, restaurants and even in people’s own homes. Most of the food that is being thrown away is still completely fine to eat, but people feel that it is safer and easier to just throw the food away, instead of taking the risk of getting sick from it or finding other uses for it. There is a lot of confusion when it comes to food waste, the biggest confusion people seem to have is the expiration date that is printed on food products. Because there is so much wasted food in the world, there needs to be changes in how food is produced, processed, distributed and consumed.…

    • 1903 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    wasting food has a very big impact on the environment. Also, the wasted food has to go somewhere and thee water waste is increasing each year. We ually waste more than half of the produce we get from the store. It takes a lot of water to grow gardens and produce. It has become a bad habit in america to waste food and not think twice about it. Like in schools, restaurants and households they all waste so much food each year.…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the United State today, children and adults face hunger in every community across the country because there are so many imprudent individuals who carelessly wasted food through each year. According to people of the foundation call “United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization”, explained that there is an estimate of one-third of all food grown is lost or waste in the world. There are so many individuals who are responsible for the waste food that not only affects us but, also to our resource of supply and to our environment. Food waste has a negative impact on our population of the American consumer. Therefore, people must change their ways to not throw away food in order to help our population to reduce on food wasted.…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lack Of Food In America

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Around the world, there are restaurants and store who waste foods, mainly because of the item size or shape color.Some people believe that eating food that is different or have a different color will get you sick. What they really don’t know is that they're people that will do anything to get a piece of bread. Many buffets restaurants throw away food that gets left over. While there people who are suffering.“Americans throw out the equivalent of $165 billion worth of food each year, researchers say. In fact, we waste more than 20 pounds of food per person every…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    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.…

    • 1248 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Society And Food Waste

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Today society has a huge impact on food being wasted, majority of the society wastes food on a daily bases, while many activist help to try to conserve the food from being wasted. While the non-activist on the other hand of society is wasting the food products, without thinking of all the effects that goes along with the process. When a single human being is wasting food, the human doesn 't think what the food that is being wasted can be beneficial to another human. It’s time to fix this problem of food wasting and redesign solutions to help conserve the food which is being…

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays