Stop Food Waste Now!
What can you do?
Food waste Must End!
Perfectly good food is being wasted in enormous amounts by grocery stores, restaurants, schools, and even by people in their own home. Something must be done to control this wastefulness. Everyone has a part in preserving food. It's up to you to do yours.
See how much food is wasted in America
Thinking about food waste is one thing, but seeing the numbers puts it into a whole new perspective.
Solutions
Daily Table
This organization gathers food that has past its sell by date, but is still perfectly fine to be eaten. By doing this, food that was going to be wasted is being saved. It is an upstream solution because it increases the distribution of food that would have been thrown away.
Taking Small Steps at Home
By buying only the food that you know you will need, you will end up throwing away less food. This is a small step that can be done as a family. It doesn't solve the issue of food waste completely, but it eliminates food waste in your own home. By buying only what you need you will have less left over food that could go bad and end up in the garbage.
Farmers Preserving Food
Once food is harvested, it needs to be transported to the store to be sold. If food perishes before it gets there, it must be thrown away. Some farmers are not educated in how to preserve their harvests, or they do not have the supplies. If they are given the tools and instructions on how to preserve their harvest, a good amount of food can be saved. This is an upstream solution to saving food because it eliminates the first chance for food to be wasted.
Daily Table selling food past its sell by date
Food is not necessarily bad once it has past its sell by date. If every grocery store continued to sell their food paste the sell by date, there would be a lot less food being wasted.
What can you do?
There are many ways to go about the issue of food waste. There are steps you can take that get to the root of the problem and there are steps that aren't as dramatic, but still help the cause. In your own home you can make an effort to waste less food by being conscientious of the food you have and eating it before it has to go to waste. If you want to get more involved in the cause, you can talk to your grocery store manager about what can be done to eliminate the food that they may be throwing out (taking a hint from Daily Table). You could try to organize a way to collect food that would be wasted and send it to a shelter or soup kitchen. If you want to see what can be done on an even larger scale, you can contact your state legislator to raise this issue to their attention and see if there's anything that they can do.
Do Your Part!
find your local food bank to donate
Contact Your State Legislator
find you state legislator and see what can be done
Food Waste - A Story of Excess
Have you ever wondered where your next meal is coming from?
Have you ever wondered where your left overs are going?
Works Cited
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NUyZVwhwphA__MctL3PB-MXEQj5B1JOov167S12pqc0/edit
http://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/food-waste-responsible-54799/
http://www.dotnews.com/2015/daily-table-open-friday-codman-square
http://www.wasteminz.org.nz/sector-groups/behaviour-change/national-food-waste-prevention-project/
http://inhabitat.com/tag/food-waste/
http://www.sustainableamerica.org/blog/introducing-i-value-food-a-campaign-to-end-food-waste/