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$165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

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Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#31

Post by wisty »

Full report here, for those who are more interested in the report than the media reprint: http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf

The issue is, it's a long supply chain (farm to fork) with waste occurring all the way.

Overall, fruit and veg is the worst (52%), then seafood (50%), then grain (38%), then meat (22%), then milk (20%). Of course, meat "wastes" a lot more, because it requires lots of inputs, as vegetarians are keen to point out.

It's also broken down according to where the loss happens- farm, post-farm handling, processing and packaging, distribution and retail, and consumer loss.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#32

Post by ars »

JonnieCache wrote: post #29
ars wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he doesn't. There's plenty of room in landfills. No one wants them near them, but we are not wanting for room. The waste involved is a different story, but worrying about space in landfills is laughable.

On behalf of everyone in your country younger than you: cheers for not giving a fuck. Don't expect much sympathy when you all have alzheimer's. This is what I mean when I talk about the death of inter-generational good faith. Unless of course you're working on some sort of synthetic biology to eat trash, in which case, carry on I guess. We're all (desperately) rooting for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_waste_disposal

We need to get energy sorted first, but the waste is not going anywhere.

But seriously, landfills are really not a big environmental problem.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#33

Post by rayiner »

ars wrote: post #27
rayiner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are. States like NY, IL, and MA are running quite short on landfill space. E.g. the Chicago area has a little over a dozen years of landfill space left at current rates. As a result they have to ship the waste to places like West Virginia and Ohio, which have a lot of available space. However, this creates a lot of greenhouse gas emissions in the process, and of course costs money.

The only reason they are short is NIMBY. As far as actual space there is plenty of room.

The reason they are short is the huge expense of building modern landfills in densely-populated areas. They're not just a big hole in the ground.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#34

Post by rayiner »

ars wrote: post #32
JonnieCache wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On behalf of everyone in your country younger than you: cheers for not giving a fuck. Don't expect much sympathy when you all have alzheimer's. This is what I mean when I talk about the death of inter-generational good faith. Unless of course you're working on some sort of synthetic biology to eat trash, in which case, carry on I guess. We're all (desperately) rooting for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_waste_disposal We need to get energy sorted first, but the waste is not going anywhere. But seriously, landfills are really not a big environmental problem.

Only if you don't drink water.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#35

Post by superic »

hessenwolf wrote: post #13
superic wrote: post #2

For years, I've been behind the 'stop at the grocery store every day on the way home' way of not wasting food. My wife and I have a routine that is IM around 4pm, decide on dinner, one of us stops for ingredients on our way home. At first, it seems like a pain to go every day but when you realize how little you throw away, it's fantastic. (Granted, we live in a city where hopping off of public transit to stop at the…

For years, I've been a stop at the grocery store every day person, and it is a disaster for me! I spend way more money, and waste more, because I buy for that meal in small quantities, and don't necessarily re-use the tail-end of the ingredients. Back when I was poor, I used to plan 3 meals a day for 7 days plus snacks, optimising re-use of ingredients that I would purchase for that week. This is likely just a case o…

You make a great point of: penny wise, pound foolish. At first, shopping for the day can be like that. However, buying things like spices, oils, rice, etc, in bulk that do not go bad is a part of it. Ingredients you buy daily are exactly enough tomatoes, exactly enough ground turkey, just one small onion, etc, items that are priced per pound rather than cheaper in bulk.

I think that buying your perishables daily (if you can) can save you a lot of money and wasted food.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#36

Post by JonnieCache »

ars wrote: post #32
JonnieCache wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On behalf of everyone in your country younger than you: cheers for not giving a fuck. Don't expect much sympathy when you all have alzheimer's. This is what I mean when I talk about the death of inter-generational good faith. Unless of course you're working on some sort of synthetic biology to eat trash, in which case, carry on I guess. We're all (desperately) rooting for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_waste_disposal We need to get energy sorted first, but the waste is not going anywhere. But seriously, landfills are really not a big environmental problem.

It's not specifically about landfills. It's the wilful ignorance of the consequences of exponential growth curves, just because we personally happen to live on the left side of the graph where things are kind of OK.

It's the same kind of thinking that caused the financial crisis, it's the same kind of thinking that will probably cause the death of our species, if that happens. It's utterly morally reprehensible, and we're all guilty of it. Our entire modern civilisation is founded on it.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#37

Post by mbreese »

graeme wrote: post #25
wonnage wrote: post #6

When I'm sitting in my chair and reading about bakeries throwing out day-old bread, it sounds wasteful; when I actually go to buy bread, I'm looking for the freshest, warmest loaf I can get. And thanks to privileged, illogical, fresh-bread-seeking bourgeois like me, the bakery's inclined to toss perfectly good bread. Thinking about this, I'm convinced it's all just because we have enough resources to allow this waste…

Surplus food consumption and waste in San Francisco/America raises food prices globally. A lot of that food will be wasted imports, or food that could have been exported if not bought by American consumers.

Only on products that can be exported or are otherwise fungible, primarily grains. But you'd also have to calculate the costs of shipping excess grain to the comparison of global grain prices, because it's a tad bit expensive to ship tons of grain around the world.

And then you'd also have to calculate the effects of a smaller market on the produce sellers of the world. I'm sure that farmers who export food to the US do so because the prices they get are better; otherwise, they'd be selling it locally. So, if they sold less to America, they wouldn't be making as much money, which wouldn't be feeding into their local economies. And that will hurt people as well.

It isn't as simple of a problem as what you're trying to make it. True, Americans - in general - should probably eat less. But the reason isn't to help global food prices. But, if you're talking about trying to feed under-nourished Americans, that's a different argument.

If you really want to help lower global food prices, the first step would be to stop turning corn into ethanol fuel (ethanol for human consumption is fine). Linking the prices of a cereal grain to the cost of energy is a dumb move.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#38

Post by kamaal »

I may be wrong here.

But every time the topic of food wastage comes up. People really talk about hungry people across the world and how it can be delivered to them instead of being wasted here. The reason why most people don't get food is because they can't afford it, not because food is in short supply.

The solution to these problems really is to improve their living conditions by giving them jobs by which they can buy food.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#39

Post by stretchwithme »

I think it would be great if we could somehow keep track of food that was about to expire and decide to donate it before it goes to waste. Things like eggs and old cans of soup (not half chewed slices of pizza).

Of course, the amount of resources expended to handle the logistics would probably be a huge waste of your time. Its probably cheaper to donate some cash to a food bank.

I'm sure it will be cheaper to do when robots start doing everything. But since robots will be growing food on the side of every building, food is probably going to be a lot cheaper too.

Re: $165 Billion: Food Thrown Away By Americans Every Year

#40

Post by ars »

batgaijin wrote: post #18

5% of our population is starving/malnourished children... http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/chi... Everyone reading this forum has probably never come close to actually dealing with the poverty levels that afflict a surprisingly large amount of people in America. The level of accepted inequality with almost no social welfare net is atrocious.

No welfare net??

There most definitely is one. Both government run and private.

In fact the very link you posted comes from exactly such a welfare net! Those numbers you post? Those are the numbers of people served by the net!

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