Food Waste

An artistic self portrait series accompanied by an easy to digest discussion about food waste in America.

Did you know? Within a year Americans will waste an average of $408 billion worth of food, according to Feeding America. The average American family throws out $1,600 on produce alone; they cause 43% of food waste. To put this in an even smaller perspective, on average, one person will create a pound of food waste per day! Dairy products are actually one of those food items we waste the most. When we look outside of households, like restaurants or grocery stores for example, we see that they tend to rack up 40% of food waste.  

Sometimes a household causes such food waste down to something as simple as not understanding the difference between “Best By” dates and “Expires By” dates. The difference here is that Best By foods are still okay to eat past their date but taste or other factors may not be as great as if they would be if eaten right away while Expire By dates are highly perishable foods that can rack up a lot of concern for your well being if eaten past their date. Freezing food where applicable can help this issue, or attempting to find a way to better portion out your meal plans and/or creating more organized plans of meals throughout your week. Making your grocery trip more deliberate at least in my personal experience, has really helped me in lowering my amount of food waste my own home causes each month. 

I think a good thing to point out too before I delve into other things under this topic, is that with prices going up for seemingly everything and basic means becoming harder to obtain - donation centers like food pantries can really benefit off of you simply cleaning out your cabinets of food you know you wont end up eating before they expire. There’s about 35 million people in America suffering from food scarcity. Out of those 35 million, 10 million are children. Sometimes we buy things with the intent to make a certain meal here and there and then lose track of the days and forget to do so, this would be a great opportunity to donate these food items to your local food pantries and donation centers that accept food. 

When we talk about eating out, on average Americans spend around $3,000 per year on eating out. Even though we’re talking food waste here, this also has a huge impact on litter/plastic usage and consumption when we take into account plastic bins to take food home in, plastic bags, utensils, etc. “The restaurant industry spends an estimated $162 billion every year in costs related to food waste.” Says an article covering this issue from RTS . Com. 

When we talk about food waste, I don’t hear the topic too often come into play on how this impacts the planet. The planet is highly negatively impacted by this alongside humans. Food waste means that any energy used to make the food that produces harmful emissions is also a massive and hurtful waste. Food production that leads to food waste makes a negative impact through greenhouse gasses which make up 11% of the world’s emissions. These include Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and chlorofluorocarbons which all contribute to global warming. Food that decays in landfills produces nitrogen pollution, which causes issues such as dead zones and harmful algae blooms. 

“According to the World Wildlife Federation, the production of wasted food in the United States is equivalent to the greenhouse emissions of 37 million cars.” 

We have made efforts in a bigger platform to help the reduction of food waste through organizations such as Feeding America, Which collect high quality food that would otherwise go to waste and distribute it to organizations helping in the fight against hunger. 

Back in 2015, the USDA joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cut our nation’s food waste by 50% by 2030. How they will track this will be through two measures, EPA Estimates and USDA Estimates. Though neither of these will provide absolute certain results, it will however show us evidence of our progress in reducing food waste and serious environmental impacts associated with landfilling food. There will also be other efforts documented to supply further information on other segments in the supply chain. 

“Launched by USDA and EPA in 2016, U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions are businesses and organizations that have made a public commitment to reduce food loss and waste in their own operations in the United States by 50 percent by the year 2030. Note: The U.S. The Food Waste Challenge group has been retired. Companies and organizations that have joined the Food Waste Challenge are encouraged to become U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions.” - USDA . Gov

I’ll end this with some specific ways you can reduce your food waste at home, if you made it this far, I appreciate you for listening and if you would like to do your own reading based on my findings the links I gathered information from will be cited below: 

  • Keep a regular list of meals and the ingredients needed for them Always look in your cabinets, freezer and refrigerator to make a physical or mental list of what you already have before heading out to the store! 

  • Planning your meals for the week before shopping for food!

  • Make your shopping list based on how many meals you know you’ll eat at home, maybe account in your list the nights/number of nights you might rather eat out too.

  • If you want to get extra specific, you can also include quantities noting how many meals you’ll make with each item to avoid over buying. 

  • Buying in large quantities only helps you if you’ll actually use it all before it expires. I know grocery stores make it sound like a great deal, but it’s not really a deal if you won’t get your full use out of what you’re buying. 

  • Just because the produce isn’t perfect looking, does not mean it is no longer good to eat! Make sure you know the difference between food that has spoiled and food that just isn’t the image of perfection! If you meal prep for the week, or prep your food in any way that removes it from the original packaging that provides the Expiration or Best By dates, make sure that you have it written somewhere on the new packaging those dates! 

  • Lastly, For the artists out there! Make sure if you are incorporating food to create art with that it will not create direct food waste. Have a plan from start to finish on how to care for the food while making art with it so that it will then be safe to eat or compose with afterwards. (Example wood be in the photos showcased here, Octopus can be fed to both cats and dogs in small bite portions if fully/properly cooked! I have four cats and one dog in my house currently so this is great for someone who doesn’t eat much sea life if any but had this vision to create with them.)

Work Cited:

https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/#:~:text=

https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/reduce-food-waste

https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

https://www.epa.gov/recycle/preventing-wasted-food-home