Hey dearest readers,
This week, Harvard’s Resource Efficiency Program is doing an educational series on food waste, and we’ve rounded up a few powerful info-graphics to get the message across.
Hopefully you’ll find them as interesting as we did…check out the links below for more!
http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/FTFin-FoodWaste.jpeg
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680494/the-environmental-impact-of-wasted-food
And a few specific statistics to mull over from http://www.wastedfood.com/:
- Americans are wasting 1400 calories, per day, per person…that’s 150,000,000,000,000 calories wasted per year…that’s food for 2 billion people. In the United States, we waste more than 40% of the food we grow.
- There was a 50% increase in U.S. food waste from 1974-2003.
- Food waste is the biggest component of trash in landfills and leads to methane emissions…a greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
- Food prices have risen 42% over the last ten years.
- Waste of finite resources: 25% of all freshwater and 300 million barrels of oil that go toward food production are wasted.
- $250 BILLION is lost globally on this problem every year.
I know we can all be more mindful about taking only what we’ll eat and when relevant, sampling meals beforehand (rather than taking heaping portions of something we might not like). This week, let’s all focus on tasting to reduce waste.
