The stat about food waste blew my mind

I was reading through a report from Project Drawdown last night and saw that roughly 1/3 of all food produced globally gets wasted. That's like 1.3 billion tons per year. It hit me because I've been composting my kitchen scraps for a year now but never realized how much energy goes into growing food that just gets tossed. Has anyone else looked into their own household waste and found a number that shocked them?

2 comments

2 Comments

betty_shah20d ago

I was just reading about this too, actually saw a piece from the BBC that said if food waste was a country it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. That one really stopped me. My own household waste wasn't as bad as I thought but I did a week-long audit last year and found I was tossing about a quarter of the fresh produce I bought, mostly because I forgot what was in the crisper drawer. Now I keep a sticky note on the fridge door with a list of what's about to go bad.

allen.amy19d ago

My neighbor Sarah did that audit thing too and found out she was throwing away almost half her bread. She started keeping it in the freezer and just toasting slices as needed, said it cut her waste way down. The crisper drawer seems to be the real problem spot for most people I know, stuff just gets buried in there.