Nobody really thinks about the massive amount of food that gets wasted daily. For example, when my cereal gets a little too soggy, I throw it away. When fruit is somewhat discolored, I throw it away. This has become a natural habit for most people. This natural habit is causing more harm to the world and the people in it than we think. Food waste is a serious and underestimated problem that needs to be solved. There are plenty of causes that lead to food waste and ways that those causes have changed over time. Since there is so much waste, it highly impacts our environment and economy; however, there are some solutions to help decrease waste in our lives.

The main cause to food waste is careless people who throw away any food that they don’t feel like eating. Saving money has been a high focus for many people; however, we still waste tons on money through our food wasting actions. Back in 1982, the average person spent twelve percent of their total household expenses on food; but now, shopping for most foods has become cheaper. Americans today only spend about six percent of their total household expenses on food. Food is now cheaper to buy; therefore, consumers will carelessly spend large amounts of money during each trip they take to a grocery store or supermarket. A majority of the food bought will get eaten, yet the rest of it will most likely expire or go bad before the consumer gets the chance to eat it. The amount of food waste in the US has risen fifty percent since the seventies, but on the other hand, the price and nutrition of the food has decreased. According to the American Chemistry Council, a national survey taken in 2015 conveyed that we waste an estimated $640 in household food each year. Jennifer Killinger wrote in her article that “conducted in April, by TNS Global, the survey of 1,000 adults on attitudes toward food waste and packaging revealed that 76 percent of households say they throw away leftovers at least once a month, while 53 percent throw them away every week, and 51 percent say they throw away food they bought but never used.” Steve Russell, vice president of plastics at the American Chemistry Council, said that “people from all walks of life and around the globe understand that wasted food is a critical issue. Improving the way we protect and preserve foods can help consumers save money, get more food to people who need it, and significantly reduce our environmental footprint.” I agree with Steve that many people understand that it is a critical issue, but they don’t really realize just how much it is actually affecting our world. A simple action people are doing that leads up to such large amounts of food waste is not using the right packaging to keep leftovers fresh and edible. This leads to a huge amount of leftovers thrown out and uneaten.

The food waste problem starts even before the food reaches the grocery store where there is already a huge portion of food getting thrown out. Grocery stores refuse to stock their shelves with so called ‘ugly’ foods because consumers won’t buy them, even though they taste the exact same. “Every year some six billion pounds of US fruits and vegetables go unharvested or unsold, often for aesthetic reasons” says a writer from National Geographic in the article How ‘Ugly’ Fruits and Vegetables Can Help Solve World Hunger.  Large quantities of produce is left in the fields to rot, fed to livestock, or hauled directly to landfills due to their appearance. ‘Ugly’ produce is being embraced rather than rejected in countries such as Denmark and the United Kingdom. It is so popular to raise awareness for food waste that Hungry Harvest created an emoji keyboard that includes misshapen strawberries giving a thumbs up and other foods such as two-headed carrots. Another problem leading up to food waste is the oversized portions served at restaurants. People order a huge plate of food, then only eat half of it. And where does that food end up? Of course, the trash can, which gets sent to landfills. The massive amount of food that is being sent to landfills is poorly affecting our environment.

Much energy, water, and land is put into producing fresh food which means about 4 percent of energy, 25 percent of water, and 20 percent of land is being used to supply food that ends up being thrown out. After the scraps are hauled to landfills, they are eventually broken down into methane, which is a highly potent greenhouse gas. A study in the UK found from research that if all food waste was eliminated from landfills, it would be the same as taking 1 in 4 cars off the roads. Beth Gardiner wrote in a New York Times article, The Economic and Environmental Costs of Food Waste published in 2014 that the Food and Agriculture Organization said that if the total waste was added up, it would create around 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually. The agency points out that if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States. According to the UN, the amount of water wasted on unwanted foods would be equal to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River. Another way food waste poorly affects our environment is wasting meat, which is one of the worst foods a person could dispose of. To produce a kilogram of grain, it requires 1,500 liters of water, but a kilogram of beef requires ten times as much water; therefore, throwing out beef compared to other foods is a lot more harmful to the environment. Although there are many ways that food waste ruins the environment, there are also a lot of things we can do to help.

A basic first step to help reduce food waste is to make a grocery list of only items needed before going to the store. This is a simple way to save money and reduce waste. Lee Moran wrote in her article The One Simple Trick I Use to Totally Slash My Food Waste from the Huffington post, published in December of 2016, that every week, she writes on a slip of paper what meals she is going to have each day so that she can buy only the ingredients she needs and the correct portion sizes, so that she doesn’t buy more food than needed. She claims that using this method for grocery shopping has helped her save money that she can spend on enjoyable things like vacations or treat herself to eating out some nights. A helpful tip is to not shop when hungry, otherwise people tend to overstock their cupboards and refrigerators with foods they see at the store, but then end up not eating it before it goes bad. Personally, I know that my family ends up with a heaping cart of food when our original intention is to buy a few items on our list. From experience, those foods sometimes end up in the trash before we get the chance to eat them. Another way to help decrease waste is checking out various food donation websites that help to decrease waste and hunger. Julie R. Thomson wrote an article for The Huffington Post, 11 Ways You Can Support the Fight Against Food Waste from July 2016, that lists websites and organizations that we can reach out to or help support. Some examples are Imperfect Produce, EcoScraps, Food Cowboy, Society of St. Andrews, and Food Recovery Network. Since 2011, this organization has recovered 1,324,680 pounds of food which are taken from university dining halls and delivered to food shelters across the country. Many countries are starting to realize how big of a problem food waste is and are taking action. South Korea is charging for garbage by weight to encourage less waste. British supermarkets are selling more misshapen foods so that less is being wasted. France became the first country to punish shops for throwing out unsold groceries, rather than giving them away. Lastly, Italy passed a new law that will make it easier for supermarkets to donate unwanted items to those in need.

Food waste is finally starting to get noticed and changes are being made to help reduce the high amounts of food waste that are affecting the environment. Many people don’t realize the little things they are doing daily that add up to much larger problems. The causes of these issues have changed over time, but are only getting worse. Negative economic and environmental impacts from food waste will only get worse, unless we take action. There are simple actions to change about your daily routine, like not tossing out soggy cereal, and even larger actions like supporting food waste organizations for those who this is an important issue to. Food waste is a serious and underestimated problem that needs to be solved, but after seeing what actions have been made and what we can all do to fix it, food waste will hopefully be a problem we no longer have to worry about.