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Food Waste

3.2 Benefits of Preventing Food Waste

 

Benefits of Preventing Wasted Food at Home

Save money by buying only what you need, eating what you buy, and avoiding throwing away food. The average family of four spends almost $3,000 per year on food that does not get eaten.

Image of woman dumping food into trash can with text explaining that reducing food waste could save a family of four $56 per month that could be used for other things.

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Reduce your environmental footprint.

  • Conserve resources and energy. When food is wasted, the land, water, energy, and other inputs that are used in producing, processing, transporting, preparing, storing, and disposing the food are wasted as well.
  • Reduce GHG emissions. The majority of GHG emissions from landfilled food waste result from activities prior to food entering a landfill, including the production, transport, processing, and distribution of food. Plus, when food decomposes in a landfill, methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted. Municipal solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the U.S. and food waste is responsible for 58% of landfill emissions.

This is an infographic showing what resources go into a year of food loss and waste in the U.S. These include greenhouse gas emissions of more than 42 coal-fired power plants; enough water and energy to supply more than 50 million homes; the amount of fertilizer used in the U.S. to grow all plant-based foods for U.S. human consumption; and an area of agriculture land equal to California to New York.

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License

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Introduction to Food Insecurity Copyright © 2019 by Olya Glantsman; Jack F. O'Brien; and Kaitlyn N. Ramian (Editors) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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