While a part of the world is starving, word got around that America throws away about a third of our available food. Now, the country is taking steps to reduce their food waste. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency together with many private-sector and food bank partners announced the first ever national target for food waste.
Tom Vilsack, Agriculture Secretary, said, "They are basically challenging the country to reduce food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030." Currently in a study done, about 133 billion pounds of food is wasted each year, he added. This amount of food wasted is enough to fill the Sears Tower 44 times.
Everyone is to be blamed for this, not just the industry but the consumers as well. The amount of food bought in supermarkets and then kept on the refrigerators are so high that sometimes most of the food goes sour or goes pass their expiry date and are thrown away. For industries on the other hand, take for example, lettuce farms in California, where in vegetable are thrown away when it doesn't come to cosmetic standard. And often times food are left in landfills because they will not stay fresh long enough to be imported.
Initiatives fighting these practices have been popping up left and right, an example is the Food Recovery Challenge at the EPA, which helps food manufacturers and buyers to donate more food. Groceries and stores are also buying and selling more imperfect produce. Another good way to motivate people to throw less food waste is the thought that more fossil fuel is to be used to grow and ship produce, harming the environment.
Vilsack says the public awareness needed around food waste recaps him of another problem America tackled back in the 1960s and 1970s: litter. There was a time when people rolled down their windows and tossed trash on to highways, he commented. He also says how common it happened back when he was a kid.
