Food Waste Management Essay

“Have you ever thrown away food and then afterwards feel guilty of where it could have gone? We as a group have decided to focus on food waste for the reason of the massive amount of food that gets wasted each year. More than 70 billion pounds of food gets thrown away every year and if we don’t change this it can lead to world hunger.

Food waste has developed over the whole existence of humans and has only been getting worse. This issue is becoming worse over the years because of oversized proportions and ignorance. This keep getting worse if we don’t do anything to stop it the amount of food that is being wasted to unreasonably high and there are simple solutions to solve this problem. For example save uneaten food for later or just plainly getting a smaller proportion. One in six Americans are food insecure, which will keep increasing if we don’t put a stop to this food waste.

For many people on the planet, food is a given. But for the staggering more than 820 million people who are hungry, food is not a guarantee. 1.6 billion tons of food worth around $1.2 trillion are lost or wasted every year, the study found, and the problem is only getting worse. If we don’t do something to stop this than the problem will just keep escalating. Food waste is set to increase by 33% in the next ten years. Recents studies show that 92% restaurants in america serve oversized food proportions. This is one of many examples of food waste that occurs every day. One solution to this is to get and serve smaller proportions.

Californians throw away nearly 6 million tons of food each year, this represents about 18 percent of all the material that goes to landfills. Imagine if that food wasn’t thrown away how many people that could have feed. “This represents about 18 percent of all the material that goes to landfills. According to CalRecycle, “In order for California to reach its goal of 75% percent source reduction, recycling and composting, food waste must be addressed.” Food waste has indeed become an issue of great public concern. Food waste is the intentional discarding of edible items, mainly by retailers and consumers and mainly occurs in developed regions.

Another way to put this is that people die because they don’t have food and this could easily be prevented if people get smaller proportions. According to BCG estimated, “By 2030, food waste will increase to 2.1 billion tons, worth around $1.5 trillion.” This shows that food waste is a major problem and other than food being wasted, money is also being wasted. Every food insecure person in the world could be fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US and Europe. Just think about all of the 1 billion food insecure people next time you buy an oversized proportion of food.

California alone throw away 5.6 million tons of food every year which is 18% of the states food waste. Refrigerators in the U.S have grown in size by 15% due to since the 1970 due to people buying larger portions of food. According to Food Waste FAQs when a person goes grocery shopping on average they waste about 30 to 40 percent of the food they buy. People sometimes buy unnecessary food products that they don’t end up using it or they forget about which makes it get spoiled or they assume its gone bad so they throw it away. A new study shows that yearly in the U.S restaurants lose 2 billion dollars in profit due to food waste.

Restaurants are a major factor to the causes of food waste, they waste 22 to 33 billion pounds of food every year. It is around 25% of the food we waste each year, which cost around 56 billion dollars. Since the 1970 the average food plate served by restaurants has increased by 138% making more than double the size. In the 197o burgers only weighed 5.9 oz now they weigh 7.3 oz making it almost an increase by 2 ounces, the average weight of french fries in the w1977 was 2.1 oz now they weigh 3.3 oz. This shows the mass of food has increased over the years, which only increases the food waste.

People buy way too much food and don’t eat half of it, nor do they plan out the amount of food their going to use to cook or to eat. Farmers and food manufactures over produce food for us to buy in the time. Storage is also a huge problem for manufactures they over produce food and don’t know where to store a percent of it. Farmers sometimes plant crops to early as a response to lack of food and money. Fresh produce such as meat and fish sometimes spoiled do the hot climate.

One experience I’ve had dealt with in relationship to food waste is within my Culinary art class. I see a lot of leftovers, rot ingredients, and good food gets thrown away every day. In a recent study led by EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) it talks about how much MSW (municipal solid waste) is thrown away each year. It is estimated that 39.7 million tons of food gets thrown away each year. Another solution to decrease the amount of food waste each year is by composting.

Solutions, solutions to our problems are not that hard they are pretty simple actually. One of the simplest ways to minimize food waste is by checking the labels of the food you buy to make sure you can eat them on time before they rot. In the article “ Would you eat food made with ‘thrash?’ by Emily Matchar It talk about making food from trash. It uses the example of making ketchup out of old tomatoes. It states “The problem of food waste has been getting more attention in recent years. Globally, up to one-third of all food is spoiled or lost before it can be eaten.” this is here to show that food waste is still a common problem a lot of people don’t notice.

Food waste is a problem which has a negative effect on both humans and the environment. Food waste that decomposes in a landfill produces methane, methane is a gas that is 28 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Methane absorbs the sun’s heat causing an increase in the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere, this increase in temperature contributes to Global Warming causing more problems. Food Waste also affects humans because food wasted is money wasted. Statistics show the average American family wastes ? the food they purchase, that means they are wasting money on food they don’t need. Food waste also accounts for the great amount of water wasted all around the world. Agriculture uses 70% of the water throughout the world, so any produce that gets thrown away is water being wasted. Water is crucial for our survival so we want to make sure it doesn’t go to waste.

Food waste has many indirect influences that cause greater problems. One of these problems is World Hunger, food waste is the root to all hunger worldwide. Food is being wasted at all stages of production. Food waste starts at harvest due to lack of resources and continues till the food reaches your plate and you throw it away. Approximately ? of the world’s food is being wasted every year, that’s enough to feed 2 billion people. Food waste also causes Global Warming, when we produce food we release greenhouse gases which heat up our atmosphere. Therefore if reduce the amount of food wasted we can decrease the greenhouse emissions produced by food production. However the World’s population is constantly increasing which means that food production must increase as well, an increase in food production would cause even more global warming. Therefore reducing food waste is beneficial to our atmosphere and humans. Just by reducing food waste you can help reduce World Hunger and Global Warming.

In conclusion, food waste is a problem which occurs worldwide and affects both humans and our environment in a negative way. Food waste indirectly creates greater problems such as Global Warming and World Hunger. Therefore reducing our food waste would be beneficial to both humans and our environment. Food waste is hurting our environment and you can help, if everyone minimizes the amount of food they waste the world would be a much better place. We can reduce World Hunger and Global warming if we just waste less food. Earth would be healthier and more people would be able to eat. So all in all, hopefully this essay helped you realise the negative impacts food waste has on our earth and how you can help.

Work cited

Cesar Barajas

1. uny.edu/koutavas3/background-info
2. https://foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/
3. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-have-food-portions-increased-2016-4#the-perfect-salt
4. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-have-food-portions-increased-2016-4#the-perfect-salty-snack-3
5. y-snack-3

Jorge

1. https://newsela.com/read/elem-food-from-trash/id/39312/
2. https://www.nrdc.org/issues/food-waste
3. https://www.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-wasted-food-home

Alex

1. https://www.wfpusa.org/stories/8-facts-to-know-about-food-waste-and-hunger/
2. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/fight-climate-change-by-preventing-food-waste

Nicolas:

1. https://stopwastingfoodmovement.org/food-waste/food-waste-facts/
2. https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-increase-2597861750.html
3. https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/organics/food

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