Tossed Out: Food Waste in America
Food Waste Piling Up More Than Ever
Americans are really good at wasting food. In fact, we’re wasting more with every passing year. Here’s what you can do to help prevent food waste, or at least put it to better use.
With curbside composting, food waste not a total loss
Wasting around 40 percent of all the food produced in the U.S. certainly has its drawbacks: It’s not feeding people in need, it’s expensive and it does a lot of environmental damage. But across the country, cities, towns and companies are finding food waste doesn’t have to be a total loss. In fact, it can…
Choices can cut school food waste
Lunch time at Harris Bilingual Elementary School in Fort Collins, Colo., displays all the usual trappings of a public school cafeteria: Star Wars lunch boxes, light up tennis shoes, hard plastic trays and chocolate milk cartons with little cartoon cows. It’s pizza day, the most popular of the week, and kids line up at a…
Grocery stores waste tons of food as they woo shoppers
Grocery stores and restaurants serve up more than 400 million pounds of food each year, but nearly a third of it never makes it to a stomach. With consumers demanding large displays of un-blemished, fresh produce or massive portion sizes, many grocery stores and restaurants end up tossing a mountain of perfectly edible food. Despite…
Manufacturers cut food waste to build bottom line
The long line of semi-trucks waiting to get in the gates of the Farmland Foods plant could simply wait around for a few hours to head back, fresh products on board. The trucks are loaded with hogs from several confinement operations near this factory in Milan, a small town in northeast Missouri. Within just 19…