November 26th, 2008
Reducing these losses by even a quarter, says Jones, would mean a $35 billion boost to the U.S. economy. “If you get households to reduce their losses and become more efficient in their food use, they’d have money available to spend on other things. If corporations were to increase their efficiencies, they’d have additional funding to buy more goods and hire more people. And it’s the same with farms increasing their efficiencies.
“If we get better efficiencies, we’re not putting so much pressure on farmers, who then can reduce the pressure they’re putting on the land. They can’t sustain what they’re doing now; they’re wearing the land out. And when you increase efficiency, you dramatically reduce the amount of pollution. On the farm, environmental effects come from not using gas- and oil-based fertilizers to get crops up and ready; you don’t have to use it to grow food. You don’t have to use fuel to run equipment to make and transport food.”
And you don’t have to dump it in landfills. Left to rot, food releases methane, a greenhouse gas the EPA cites as 21 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. Landfills, says the EPA, are the largest human-related source of methane in the U.S., accounting for 34% of methane emissions.
Not in My Kitchen
One of the most surprising findings of the UA study was the amount of food American households dump. Calibrated to our 2008 economy, an average family of four tosses out $1,039 annually – regardless of income, ethnicity, education and other socio-economic factors.
The specificity of the UA data is virtually indisputable. The team measured everything, no matter what they were looking at – whether it was a hamburger place or a farm or a household. “We were able to do an ethnography. We went in and ate with people, spent time with them and watched what was happening. We let them talk and tell us how they perceived things.
“If you let people tell their own story, that story unfolds, especially if you’re watching them behave at the same time. And there’s often a big contradiction in what they’re telling you to your face and what you’re seeing them do. They’d tell us how efficient they were, that they don’t waste food; yet we’re sitting there watching them dump spaghetti and meatballs into the garbage.”
Findings from a May 2008 study by UK-based nonprofit Wrap (Waste & Resources Action Programme) support this disconnect from reality. It found that everyone in the UK wastes food without realizing it. “Even householders who are adamant that their household wastes no food at all are throwing away 195 pounds of avoidable food a year.” That represents roughly one third of all food purchased.
So what’s getting the heave-ho? Pretty much everything, from fresh fruit and vegetables to leftovers to food in its original packaging. In the Wrap study, the numbers are shocking: 7 million slices of bread, 2.8 million tomatoes, 5.1 million potatoes, 4.4 million apples . . . every single day.
And the most common reason cited for food waste? It’s left unused. In the UA study, Jones found that 14% of food that comes into a household ends up going out as waste. And of that 14% deemed waste, another 14% is perfectly good food that’s still in its original packaging. Poor planning is often the culprit.
“People like to see themselves as healthy, so when they go to the store, they buy a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, which then sit in the refrigerator and spoil. Because when they get home from work after 10 hours, they’re dead tired. They grab a Hungry Man dinner out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, eat it and pass out. Instead of touching the fresh fruit and vegetables.
“By the weekend, when they have a little time to fix a meal, a lot of it has gone bad. One, they need to cut back and realize how much fruit and vegetables they’ll actually use, and second, when does everybody shop? They shop on Sunday, the worst day of the week you can go to the grocery store. Because you’ll take all those fresh fruits and vegetables, stick them in the refrigerator and by Friday night, they’re five days old.
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