Food waste is a huge, and to be honest, stupid issue that exists throughout the world. In America, 30-40% of all food supply gets completely wasted. Food is the largest category of waste put into landfills. There is no need for this much food to be thrown out considering that 690 million people in the world are undernourished and don’t have enough food to eat.

What are the causes of food waste? Why does this happen? The three main reasons are overbuying, overproduction, and spoilage. Restaurants often overbuy the amount of food they need to supply their customers with, and then it goes into the trash at the end of the day. Also, people commonly overshoot the amount of food they need for their homes, and they end up buying things that don’t get eaten. If we all just stick to the amount that we really need, we can reduce food waste a lot. Overproduction occurs when too much food is cooked. This is another common issue in restaurants, and in homes it happens when people cook a lot of food that doesn’t end up being eaten. Lastly, spoilage is a huge reason for food waste. If food doesn’t get used in time, it goes bad. This happens due to lack of visibility within refrigerators--when something gets pushed far back and forgotten about--and inadequate storage. Also, a lot of the time, people get confused by the labels on food packaging and throw it out before it really needs to be. For example, many people take the sell-by date as the expiration date which isn’t the same.

Food waste is a big problem for many reasons. One of them is the waste of all the production that goes into food production. Large amounts of water, energy, and animals go into the process, so if the food gets thrown away it’s all for nothing. The food system contributes to ⅓ of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is a huge amount. When the food gets to landfills, it breaks down into methane, which is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Also, again, so many people around the world struggle on a daily basis for food, so we shouldn’t be throwing it all out.

There are personal as well as structural solutions to food waste. On a personal level, it is good to shop smart and try to keep to what you need. You can also try to research ways to store and preserve your food in better ways so that it doesn’t get bad. One important lesson is that “ugly” food isn’t always bad, and by that I mean that in grocery stores there are often fruits and vegetables that don’t look perfect, but they’re still the same in taste and quality as the better-looking ones. A lot of these get wasted because no one wants to buy them, but most of the time they are perfectly fine. Another really good way to prevent food waste is to take leftovers. You can always take food home from restaurants if you don’t finish all of it, and then you have food that can last you a little longer! Lastly, one interesting thing is that plate size can have a big impact on how much food we consume. If you use larger plates, you are more likely to take bigger portions, which might not all get eaten. If you use a smaller plate and then run out, you can always get more from there if you’re still hungry. While these are all great methods to reduce your personal waste and help the planet, it is one that needs to be solved more systematically in order to really get to the root of the issue. Finding ways to reduce the packaging, storing, and transportation waste from food production is an example of this. Also, there are some initiatives which help fight the problem. For example, some restaurants have found ways to give unused food at the end of the day to people in need.

If you want to find ways to be more sustainable and help the earth, reducing how much food you waste is a great place to start.

Sources: Green Strategy, Borgen Magazine, Earth.org, Sustain Your Style