Society of waste

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Food Waste Essay

Jared Wilson

Professor Kelly Warren

ENC 1102

March 12, 2013

                                                            One’s waste is another’s fuel

            Eating the food found in dumpsters might sound like a terrible way to survive, but is it? Every year in the U.S. roughly 96 billion pounds of food is thrown away. As I saw in the documentary ‘DIVE’, a good portion of that food isn’t spoiled and is very much edible. To me, this is mind blowing that we waste so much food, yet, the there’s a staggering amount of hungry people struggling to find their next meal. These are often hard-working adults, children and seniors who simply cannot make ends meet and are forced to go without food for several meals, or even days. Grocery stores often over stock the perishable items making it nearly impossible for the food to be sold before the ‘best by’ date. It’s not only commercial industry’s that are wasteful; nearly half of the food prepared in the United States goes to waste. We not only have a problem with people going hungry but this amount of waste causing environmental issues as well.

           

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While dumpsters behind grocery stores fill up with food, millions of Americans are

struggling to find a meal. In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of households (approximately one in seven), were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United States 1 (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v.)  Why is this? Why wouldn’t they donate this to the food banks or mark it down a few days before it’s out of date?  America’s Second Harvest – The Nation’s Food Bank Network, a group of more than 200 food banks, reports that donations of food are down 9 percent, but the number of people showing up for food has increased 20 percent. The group distributes more than 2 billion pounds of donated and recovered food and consumer products each year. Still an incredible amount is wasted. Such is the volume that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), if just 5 percent of Americans' food scraps were recovered it would represent one day's worth of food for 4 million people. (CNN. Food left overs) I think a big reason for all of this waste is lack of knowledge.

            Even though grocery stores have a tremendous amount of wasted food, they are not the only contributor to this growing problem. Households also waste a tremendous amount of food. According to a study by the University of Arizona Garbage Project, Americans throw away 1.3 pounds of food every day, or 474.5 pounds per year.(Food Waste) It seems like the old saying “ eyes are bigger than the mouth” is true. I know for my family it’s always easier to make more food than we need because I say I will take the left overs to work. Like most people I end up forgetting them, they spoil in the fridge and end up in the garbage. Nearly half of the food made never gets consumed and ends up at the landfill. It seems if we all did just a little better about

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this, we could make a big difference. Generally speaking, consumers fail to plan their food purchases properly. That means they often throw food away when "best-before" dates expired. 

            In addition to millions of people going hungry, food waste has a very big impact on our environment. Not only is all of this waste cramming up our landfills requiring more land to adequately dispose of it, it’s also creating large amounts of methane gas. Food waste like all other trash ends up in a landfill, however, food starts to rot and decompose creating methane gas which is a potent greenhouse gas. Between the commercial industry and the household food waste we have a growing problem that needs to be addressed. There are ways to fight this ongoing problem. Food waste can be used as fertilizer but yet less than three percent of food waste is recovered for that. Also food waste can be used for production of nature renewable resources, however like recovering it for fertilizer its simply discarded. It’s up to each person to make a difference to keep this food waste out of landfills and use it for something good.

            We are a society of waste, it’s almost as if we are hardwired for it. With 96 billion pounds of food being trashed every year, we need to stop and think about our actions. We have a growing problem to deal with and eventually we will no longer be able to look the other way. Millions of people go hungry while billions of pounds of edible food are being wasted. In addition to hunger we have the environmental side of this. Throwing away food that can be used to feed the poor also creates large amounts of methane coming from our landfills. It’s time to step up and everyone do their part in curbing this problem.

                                                                                  

                                                           

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Work Cited Page

Bloom, Jonathan. American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It). Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010. Print.

U.S. hunger rate still at historic high. The Christian Century. 127.25 (Dec. 14, 2010) p17. Word Count: 380. Reading Level (Lexile): 1310.

Young, Mitchell. Garbage and Recycling. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. Print.