Janet Dodd

ENC 1102

Kelly Warren

March 18, 2013

 

Food Waste in America

 

     We have all had our mothers tell us at some point, “you need to eat all of your food; there are starving children in Africa.”  The truth is not only is there starving children in Africa, but all over the world.  There are people starving every day right here in the United States.  America is a wasteful society. Food waste is one of the biggest and most urgent problems in our world today. There are many things that could be done to work towards solving or at the very least, minimizing this situation.  Things like food waste recycling, lowering our food standards to avoid waste, food donations, and just limiting our food purchases and consumption could reduce the waste produced by a great degree. If we do not get control of this problem, the waste will take over.   

     According to the Food Recovery Network website, “1 in 6 Americans or more than 49 million people, don’t know where their next meal is coming from. 1 in 4 American children are in this category.”  Most of us have never had to worry about where our next meal would come from. Turn on any news show and nine times out of ten you will see some type of reporting about obesity in America. It has been instilled upon us since we were old enough to understand that we should not waste food. However with bigger meal portions and the option of “upsizing or super-sizing” your meal at restaurants, it is no wonder why we have such a problem in this country with food waste regardless of what we were told growing up. Dana Gunders, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s food and agriculture program said, “As a county, we’re essentially tossing every other piece of food that crosses our path, that is money and precious resources down the drain.”  The NRDC’s report stated that, “Americans discard 40 percent of the food supply every year.” How is this possible?  Where is our country heading?
Who will step up and work towards a solution?  We could start by doing the basic things; eat less, and we will in turn waste less.

     Where is the food waste coming from?  We can follow the path that food takes from growth to consumption to track the waste.  According to an article from the Washington Post.Com called “How the U.S. Manages to Waste $165 Billion in Food Each Year”  it starts with farming, post-harvesting and packing, processing and distribution and then continues to retail and grocery stores, food service restaurants and households, then finally at disposal…. Food crops can go

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unharvested for a variety of reasons, insufficient demand for the product, insufficient workers for the field, and food safety scares by the FDA.                                                                                       

     Once the crops are harvested, they are sorted to ensure they meet minimum standards.  Then the problem turns to processing and distributing.  Food must be stored in proper containers and proper temperatures to be sent out for distribution. Otherwise, it must be discarded.  “If there’s a culprit here, it’s our high aesthetic standards for food.” (The Washington Post-Plumer 2012).

     There are alternatives to wasting tons of food, we must be open to implementing the possible solutions.  One way is to cut back on our food purchases and consumption. “Just a 15 percent reduction in losses in the U.S. food supply would save enough to feed 25 million Americans annually.”(Huffington Post) Another solution is food donation.  The Food Recovery Network is a program that has been established in many colleges and universities where student volunteers take the left-over food from the dining hall after closing and take it to nearby shelters and food banks where it is then distributed to people in need. “Recovering just 15% of wasted food would be enough to feed 25 million people.”(Food Recovery Network).  Per the Food Recovery Network website, they only have chapters in 7 college campuses. 75% of American colleges don’t have a food recovery program(Food Recovery Network).  The best solution is food waste recycling. However, implementing a food waste recycling program can be a bit costly, but well worth the cost. When food waste is recycled, it can be turned into compost that could be then sold back to farmers. “An average single-family household throws away about 45 pounds of food scraps and food-soiled paper every month-around 25% of total trashed materials!”(Sierra Club). The food waste that can be recycled to be later turned into compost can consist of: food scraps, food-soiled paper products, milk and juice cartons, egg cartons(paper not styrofoam), boxes from frozen and refrigerated foods, waxed paper and paper containers, coffee filters and tea bags and other compostable items (full vacuum cleaner bags, dryer lint, tissues, cotton balls, floral trimmings, and household plants).  By recycling the food waste, we could greatly reduce the amount of waste produced and reduce the amount of debris going into our landfills daily.

     With all the good that can be done with these options, why wouldn’t everyone just do it?  There is a cost associated with every change, not only monetarily, but also, time and personnel.  Why shouldn’t all grocery and retail stores donate their, “near expiration date” food to shelters and food banks instead of tossing it in the dumpster?  It has to be packed up, delivered and stored.  What would stop the average American to not purchase food in the store and wait until it gets near expiration and then simply ask for it?  No purchase involved and no profit made.  The store would lose money.  The recycling program is the same.  A place would need to be set aside to develop the compost, people and trucks to pick up the road-side containers, thereby increasing tax dollars spent in the community. No matter what the cost associated, isn’t doing the right thing and saving our environment worth it?

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      There are millions of starving people in the United States and yet we still waste thousands of pounds of food every day.  Why can’t the food waste be donated?  Why can’t we set up curb side food waste recycling programs? We could do any number of things to help our country other than waste food. The next time that you go shopping, think about the amount of food that is wasted and thrown out and ask yourself, what can I do to help reduce food waste and in turn help ourselves and our country?

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Works Cited

 

“Food Waste: Americans Throw Away Nearly Half Their Food, $165 Billion Annually, Study Says”,

www. Huffington Post.com, August 21, 2012; accessed March 11, 2013: Web,      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/food-waste-americans-throw-away-food-study_n_1819340.html

 

Brad Plumer; “How the U.S. Manages to Waste $165 Billion in Food Each Year”,

www.washingtonpost .com, Updated August 22, 2012; accessed March 11, 2012: Web, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/22/how-food-actually-gets-wasted-in-the-united-states/

 

Scott Learn; “Portland Ready to Test Recycling Residents’ Kitchen Scraps; Oregon Live. Com;

February 03, 2010, updated October 29, 2011; accessed March 12, 2012; Web;    http://blog.oregonlive.com/environment_impact/print.html?entry=/2010/02/portland_ready to_test_collect.html

 

“Curbside Food Waste Collection – A Growing Trend”,  Sierra Club Green Home; accessed March 12,

2013; Web; http://www.sierraclubgreenhome.com/go-green/curbside-food-waste-collection-a- growing-trend/

 

Grzeskowiak, By Jennifer. "ON THE CUTTING EDGE." Waste Age. 01 Mar. 2005 eLibrary. Web. 11 Mar.

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http://www.foodrecoverynetwork.org/about-us/our-work/; Accessed March 12, 2013; Web