Food Waste Facts in the U.S.
• 40% of all the food produced in the United States goes uneaten.
• Americans throw away an estimated 25% of the food they bring home that
is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Enough to fill the Rose Bowl, a 90,000 2 seat stadium, every day.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that a typical American throws out 40 percent of fresh fish, 23 percent of eggs, and 20 percent of milk.
• Consider these cost estimates of all the food that never gets eaten in the U.S., and imagine just how much we can save by wasting less food:
• 25 percent of all freshwater used in U.S.
• 4 percent of total U.S. oil consumption
• $165 billion per year (more than $40 billion from households)
• $750 million per year just to dispose of the food
• 33 million tons of landfill waste (leading to greenhouse gas emissions)

Environmental Impacts
• Each time food is wasted all the resources that went into producing, processing, packaging, and transporting that food is wasted too. This means huge amounts of chemicals, energy, fertilizer, land and 25% of all freshwater in the U.S. is used to produce food that is thrown away.
• Additionally, most uneaten food rots in landfills where it accounts for almost 25% of U.S. methane emissions. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is 21 times more harmful to the environment than CO2.
• Getting food to our tables uses 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget , uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States.
• Only about 3% of food scraps in the U.S. are composted.
• About 2/3 of household waste is due to food spoilage from not being used in time, whereas the other 1/3 is caused by people cooking or serving too much.
• 14 percent of greenhouse gases in the United States are associated with growing, manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of food.

Social Implications
• Nutrition is also lost in the mix—food saved by reducing losses by just 15% could feed more than 25 million Americans every year at a time when one in six Americans lack a secure supply of food to their tables.
• Feeding the planet is already a struggle, and will only become more difficult with 9 to 10 billion people expected on the planet in 2050. This makes food conservation all the more important. The United Nations has predicted that we'll need up to 70 percent more food to feed that projected population. Developing habits to save food now could dramatically reduce the need for increased food production in the future.
• The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s

Global Food Waste
• About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste.
• Consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food, 222 million tonnes, as the entire net food production of subSaharan Africa.
• Industrialised countries waste 670 million tonnes. Developing countries lose 630 million tonnes. Total lost or wasted globally: 2.3 billion tonnes.
• The United States is the number one country in the world that wastes food. Close behind are Australia and Denmark, followed by Switzerland and Canada.

Water Usage Comparisons
Freshwater is a global resource that is depleting whenever food is wasted. Have a look at these facts about water usage in the production of commonly bought and in many cases wasted food items.

• It takes over 12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. Meanwhile, the largest percentage of food waste from the average American consists of meat products, and 33% ends up in a landfill.
• The production of one glass of orange juice requires 45 gallons of water. 15% of wasted food from the average American consists of fruit.
• Wheat consumes about 12 % of the global water use for crop production. Americans waste about 18% of grains.

Financial Impacts
• Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, and its costing 750 million just for the disposal.
• Supermarkets lose an estimated $15 billion annually through discarded produce.
• An American family of four ends up throwing away an average of $1,600 annually in food.

Special thanks to Dana Gunders, Food and Agriculture Project Scientist from the National Resources Defense Council, for compiling statistics and references. Check out Dana’s issue paper: “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill,” for more information.

LINK & BIBLIOGRAPHY

FoodShift.net