Original: "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" is a favorite adage in both frugal and green circles, and it is something I strive to live by. One of the best ways to "use it up" is to think differently about our food and ways to avoid wasting it. Lloyd wrote a great post a while back about the statistics for how much food we waste in the U.S., and the numbers are, frankly, appalling. On average, we waste 14% of our food purchases per year, and the average American family throws out over $600 of fruit per year.
Paraphrase: Half the loaf of bread goes stale and the grapes aren't as fresh. With an attitude to stop waste and some creativity, you can create new things with your food before it actually goes bad. Left over roasted vegetable can be made into soup and leftover rice can be added into oatmeal the next morning. There are many more ways to reduce waste in your home.
In this article statistics compare how much food is wasted between countries all over the world. Also, methane is a greenhouse gas that is much more dangerous than carbon dioxide.
This article talks about how much it costs the US to get rid of the food waste. It also talks about how food waste releases methane, which is more harmful than carbon dioxide.
This website is about Americans throwing away 165 billion dollars worth of food; shown by studies and statistics. It is also about how all Americans waste food including consumers and restaurants.
The NRDC have recently reported that most Americans discard 40% of food per year. As for our average American families ends up throwing away $2,275 annually in food a year. Little as 15% reduction in losses of food waste could save enough to feed 25 million Americans a year.
In this article by Ronald Bailey he discusses the problem and gives an average of how much food is being wasted; he also gives supported statistics from researchers across the nation. He also discusses the reason why Americans waste food and includes why it needs to be stopped.
One of the issues we waste food is because the wealthier we get, the more we unconsiously spend money at restaurants and at home and then waste food. The issue of wasted food is not on the radar of Americans.
This PDF file gives an insight about the different levels that food is lost. It gives statistics and impressive facts about food waste. For example "Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also 25 percent of all freshwater."
In America people waste tons of food each day, at home all the leftovers are put in the trashcans and are send to landfills. A statistic that is really important in this article is that 20% of are landfills have food waste.