20 pounds of food each month, thrown away, wasting 40% of America’s food supply each year. This waste affects us in more ways than most of us realize. Consider what it costs to put that food in front of us: 10% of our energy budget, 50% of our land, 80% of the fresh water we use, and $165 billion each year in uneaten food. Polluting chemicals related to food production include fertilizers and insect-and-disease-control, but let’s not ignore the fact that all that food rotting in landfills produces 25% of the methane gas in our country.
It’s time to bring back the old “Clean Plate Club” many of the older generation grew up with. If we aren’t going to eat the food we produce–or share it with the hungry in our country and all over the Earth–we should not be producing it. It makes financial, ecological, and moral sense.
[The statistics were taken from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Read their article on wasted food at http://www.nrdc.org/food/wasted-food.asp.]