Riven

Jevin Riven
Watkins
Composition 2
5 March 2017
What are we doing?

When people go to restaurants they dont really notice how much food it actually takes to

produce a single plate. When a table of four shows up it only increases. At home most run-of-the-

mill cooks will throw away bits and pieces of food that couldve been used. The world wastes

an estimated 2.7 trillion pounds of food each year. That's a third of the total food we produce

(B.I. Garfield). The average human weighs only one hundred and seventy-seven pounds.

Visualize what 2.7 trillion pounds of wasted food looks like each year. Its a staggering result.

Its wasted in restaurants, its wasted in your average homes, and it eventually ends up in

landfills. In the United States landfills are filled with billions of pounds of wasted food each year.

It kills the environment, and there are millions that go hungry each night. It starts with amount of

food wasted in restaurants and the shocking amount that is wasted in your typical household.

The highest contributor of food waste comes from restaurants. From a study by the

National Resources Defense Council over eighty-six billion pounds of food was wasted in the

year 2008 from restaurants and its only growing. Eighty-six billion pounds of food is

outrageously wasteful; this was just a statistic from the United States. Imagine the amount of

food that is wasted globally. How much of that food that couldve been donated to a good cause?

Of course cooked food maybe wouldnt travel well at long distances, but it could be transported

locally. Restaurants arent purposely trying to be wasteful its just what happens in the business.

One thing that they can improve on is portion sizes. Gunders from the NRDC explains that

portion sizes can be two to eight times larger than USDA or FDA standard serving sizes

(Gunders 11). She also states that about seventeen percent of dinners arent finished and over
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half of that isnt taken home as leftovers. Between all the types of restaurants, buffets waste the

most food by a landslide. Most restaurant owners know how much food they waste, but some are

oblivious to the problem or just dont care enough to recognize that its a problem. Many high

end restaurants know the problem of wasting food but they are more worried about the quality of

the food that they put out. According to an interview by NPR a chef in Washington D.C. Logan

Cox expresses that chefs obsess over the quality of their vegetables and their technique. They

want to make sure everything looks and tastes just right. But food waste comes in low on the

long list of priorities. (NPR Barclay). So maybe several of the chefs are just unaware of how

much food really is wasted in their restaurant. Although there are chefs and organizations who

are passionate when it comes to reducing food waste. An environmental organization called

Feedback has an event called Feeding the 5000 where local chefs in the city where its being

hosted donates food that would have been thrown out. 5000 meals are cooked with the leftover

food and served for free. Donating food that would be thrown out for a one time event is helpful.

Businesses should be holding events like feeding the 5000 every week. If its going to get thrown

out anyway, it might as well go to a good cause. An app to diffuse the waste at buffet restaurants

called BuffetGo uses new technology to help the cause. You sign up for a time at the end of lunch

or dinner and go and pick up whatever leftovers you want from a buffet for a fraction of the

price. Restaurants are wasteful but wastes in a household are also contributing to the problem.

When it comes to the average home, food waste perhaps isnt on the minds of the

common home cook. The NRDC estimates that nearly twenty-five percent of the food purchased

by households is thrown out yearly. If you break it down thats nearly three months of food

purchase dollars wise. A confusion that contributes to the loss of food is the misreading of

expiration, best, and use by dates. They have different meanings and learning them potentially
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could help reduce the waste. Foods such as fresh vegetables are some of the most commonly

wasted. That could explain why kids would waste more than adults but sadly thats not the case.

The household consumption is varied with adults wasting more in absolute terms than children,

and larger households wasting less per person than smaller households. Single-person

householders tend to throw away more per capita (Parfitt et al. 2010). Its surprising that adults

waste more than kids. Kids are the ones who are more prone to be picky eaters and to not finish

their food. Adults should be more responsible in knowing how to recognize and limit their food

waste.

Food being wasted is just a fragment of the problem of food waste. Where it ends up after

not being used is the problem and thats landfills. The USDA notes that food waste, which is

the single largest component going into municipal landfills, quickly generates methane, helping

to make landfills the third largest source of methane in the United States (OCE USDA).

Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps in heat and contributes more to global warming than

carbon dioxide. Methane also creates a somewhat ozone type layer closer to the surface of earth

that can be harmful to human health. Change needs to start at the restaurant level in reducing

their waste. When their garbage is thrown out at an exceeding rate it gives rodents and pests

perfect feeding and breeding grounds. The head honcho from the New York Rodent Control

Academy, Robert Corrigan explains that half of a lemon is big enough for flies to lay hundreds of

thousands of eggs. With rising wastes, it could potentially bring down the neighborhood value

because of all the pests that may be attracted. How would it look to customers if they see flies,

rats, and rats all around a restaurant? They most likely wouldnt be open for long.

Restaurants not having an enough demand to balance out the supply of food they make

each day or the average home cook preparing too much food and letting it go to waste. Its a
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problem that we cant keep up with. Theres too much wasted food in landfills leading to the

destruction of our environment. Food waste needs to be addressed. There are millions of people

who could use the food that is wasted. The change needs to start with restaurants reducing the

amount of food they are producing and using. Next the change needs to start in the homes of

average people. If people can reduce the amount they waste, we could change a lot. We only

have so much land space and it shouldnt be filled up with wasted food. If we can start changing

the way we do things with our food consumption, then we will be well off.
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Works Cited

Barclay, Eliza. "For Restaurants, Food Waste Is Seen As Low Priority." NPR. NPR, 27 Nov.
2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/11/27/165907972/for-
restaurants-food-waste-is-seen-as-low-priority>.

Garfield, Leanna. "The 'Seamless for Food Waste' Lets You Eat at Buffets for as Little as
$2." Business Insider. Business Insider, 05 Oct. 2016. Web. 5 Mar. 2017.
<http://www.businessinsider.com/seamless-like-app-buffetgo-2016-10>.

Gunders, Dana. "Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to
Fork to Landfill." Natural Resources Defense Council. N.p., Aug. 2012. Web. 5 Mar.
2017. <https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf>.

Parfitt, J., M. Barthel, and S. Macnaughton. "Food Waste within Food Supply Chains:
Quantification and Potential for Change to 2050." Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365.1554 (2010): 3065-081. Web.
< http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/3065#sec-1>.

Plumer, Brad. "How the U.S. Manages to Waste $165 Billion in Food Each Year." The
Washington Post. WP Company, 22 Aug. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2017.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/22/how-food-actually-gets-
wasted-in-the-united-states/?utm_term=.eeb0ad68d6bf>.

"USDA | OCE | U.S. Food Waste Challenge | FAQ's." USDA | OCE | U.S. Food Waste Challenge
| FAQ's. USDA.gov, n.d. Web. 5 Mar. 2017.
<https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm>.

Verrill, Courtney. "American Restaurants Are Wasting an Incredible Amount of Food - Here's the
Proof." Business Insider. Business Insider, 17 May 2016. Web. 5 Mar. 2017.