Mar 6th 2010 Eat Your Leftovers!
Every now and then we post about some food related environmental issue besides eating lower on the food chain (of course one of the easiest ways to shrink your carbon footprint, cut pollution and water use, and use less land), and this time it is food waste.
That food waste is a major environmental problem might be as surprising to you as beef as a major environmental problem was, but check it out - we waste about 40% of the food we produce. We waste it in production, we waste it in retail (think of all the eggs, bread, etc. that get thrown away the day after their expiration date), and more than anywhere else in the system, we waste it at home (60% of the waste)! The wasted food is a waste of all the resources that went into producing it, but they also cause pollution problems once thrown away. Check out this really cool post and ‘infographic’ from Next Generation Food in the UK to learn more.
We might not be able to to much right away about the waste in production and distribution, but we can do a lot about the waste at home. Think of all the times the milk has gone bad and you’ve poured it down the sink, all the times you stuck leftovers in the fridge in an anonymous container and forgotten about them until they grew a beard, all the times you bought the giant box of cereal but not finished it before it went really stale. All this is pretty simple to deal with. For starters, it is really easy to eat leftovers. You might label the containers, you might think more about leftovers as lunch, but leftovers are your friend! You might also buy in smaller containers - you might pay more per unit, but then you are paying more for the economy size when you throw half of it out when it molds or goes stale. Ultimately this is all about buying less food to feed yourself, which will save you money. You’ll help your wallet while you’re helping the planet.
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