Eat Your Greens and Save $43 Billion

Figures recently released by the University of Arizona demonstrate how much food is wasted each day by the United States as a whole. They calculated that a massive 40-50% of edible food never gets eaten.

These biggest problems here are stores offering 'buy one get on free' where we get two of something but can only use one before its sell by date, so the other goes to waste. Simply cooking too much food also adds to this massive total. Plastic pots of yogurt seem to be one of the most frequently wasted item and these are often thrown away unopened because they have reached their use by date. Ask yourself how many times you throw away leftovers.

The estimated value of all this wasted food is US $ 43 million per year, although the US is not the only country adding to the problem. Most of Western Europe is equally guilty of this and UK wastes about 33% of edible food annually..

There are several problem with this on a global level, not withstanding the huge waste of money. All this waste food has to go somewhere and it is most often thrown into landfill sites, or incinerated. This adds to the greenhouse effect. Rotting food in landfills produced huge amounts of pathogens, methane and other greenhouse gases. Incineration pollutes our air and buts carbon and other toxins into the atmosphere, adding to that damage.

Food that you throw away adds to climate change brought about by the greenhouse effect. This causes drought in countries like Somalia that are going through years without rainfall, so they cannot grow crops to feed themselves. Your pollution from food waste (and mine) indirectly heats up the seas and a minute change of temperature changes the balance of the ecosystem. Those who live by fishing see their catches reduced and phenomena like the El Nino affect are altered so that there are major climatic changes around the global.

Temperature rises also cause the more rapid release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Plants, trees and the oceans release tonnes of it every day. This increases the greenhouse effect and the whole thing becomes a vicious circle, as temperatures rise even higher.