What Can We Do About Food Waste?
The numbers are terrifying. Here’s some food for thought, pun fully intended.
Worldwide, humans waste 2.5 billion tons of food each year, but the United States discards more than any other country, around 60 million tons, (120 billion pounds) every year. Its equivalent to 40% of our entire food supply and translates to an average of 325 pounds of food waste per person per year.
To put it into a visual you can wrap your head around, it’s like tossing 975 apples, per person, in the trash.
Before the good news, it gets worse.
Food is largest component taking up space in our country’s landfills at 24%, more than plastic (18%), paper (12%), metal (9%), glass (5%).
Wasting food has irreversible environmental impacts; irreversible, meaning no going back. It wastes the precious water and energy it took to produce it, and emits greenhouse gasses (11 percent of the world’s emissions) — like methane, carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons, which contribute to global warming. Food that sits decaying in landfills also produces nitrogen pollution, which causes algae blooms and dead zones in bodies of water.
The production of wasted food in the United States is equivalent to the greenhouse emissions of 37 million cars.
Food wasted in America is valued at $218 billion or the equivalent of 130 billion (with a ‘b’) meals.
If we continue on this path, the results for the planet will be disastrous.
Yikes, right?
Why do we waste so much food?
It is estimated that nearly 35 million people across America (10 million of them children) have no security around food. I don’t know about you, but the thought people going to bed hungry in this wealthy country makes me lose sleep.
Getting to the bottom of what causes food waste in America traverses the complex landscapes of socioeconomic disparities, confusion, and ingrained beliefs, layered with human behaviors and bad habits. It’s a topic that I am not getting into here. Suffice it to say that it’s a big problem because 80% of people discard perfectly good food because of perceived spoilage. Simply misunderstanding expiration labels; what they actually mean for food freshness can result in food being tossed before its time.
And when you compare us to the rest of the world, food in America is plentiful and costs less than in many other places. This can contribute to a sort of devaluing of food. I often say that the good news is Americans can get anything anytime and the bad news is we can get anything anytime.
Because of abundance, we also often buy impulsively and more than we will realistically need or will be able to cook. And ease and convenience of ordering take out often leaves the fresh food to turn into a science experiment in the fridge.
We undervalue leftovers and toss whatever food scraps we deem unacceptable into the trash can.
And finally, we do not use the entirety of any food as our ancestors did; from vegetables to fruit to animals (heaven forbid…). They could not afford to waste as we can.
So what do we do? Composting isn’t a natural part of our food-prep routine…yet, so we continue to add fuel to the fire by continuously increasing the size of US landfills.
I know this all sounds bad; really bad but, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. The hope lies in food recycling and composting.
No matter how hard we try; no matter how committed we are to zero waste, there will always be scraps and bits of food that are not consumable and will be tossed.
Many cities have composting services that will pick up your scraps for a nominal fee. It’s a great service. I used one for years as it’s hard to compost in the city where I live. It often results in unwanted creatures running around my little outdoor space and honestly, no thanks. The service worked great until I discovered The Mill.
My kitchen is the center and heart of my home. It’s immaculately clean and in use most of the time in one way or another, from cooking family meals to baking to recipe testing. As a result, I had a lot of kitchen scraps, like onion skins, citrus pith, nut shells, etc. that were not useable in recipes. Composting was my answer…or so I thought. My small bucket (that got transferred daily to the big pick up bucket) was the premiere source of fruit flies in my kitchen and it always smelled a bit like a farm (no offense to farms but that perfume is best outside of the kitchen).
When I got The Mill, I was honestly unsure of what to expect. We gave it a try and now? You’d need to pry it from my cold dead hands. Quiet, efficient, not smelly…and the geniuses at The Mill will pick up when your prepaid box is full of recycled scraps, ready for the last step of composting and distribution to local farmers. Oh, and it takes a lot to fill this baby.
All you need to know to operate it is on the app. I know; I know, another app. I said the same thing as I grumbled setting up my Mill. It’s easy (even for a tech-challenged chef like me) and it advises on what you can and cannot mill (most everything…) and how to best keep your Mill operating at its best. Customer service is a dream. I think I drove them crazy when I first got mine so I wouldn’t mess it up.
And it’s beautifully designed, something very important to a kitchen lover like me.
Is there a cost to The Mill? There is, but it’s like I always say when people tell me that eating a healthy diet is expensive. You can pay now or pay in health costs later. The Mill is the same; pay now so that your kids and grandkids don’t have to for the impact of climate change later.
Knowing that my food scraps can help feed the earth is priceless.
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