For First Time, the United States Will Actually Try to Waste Less Food

"Each year, Americans throw away about a third of the country's food supply. But today, the US Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency announced the country's first-ever food waste reduction goal, calling for a fifty percent reduction by 2030.

Frankly, this is huge news. Food is the single biggest contributor to landfills today: 133 billion pounds of it end up in dumpsters each year in America—enough to fill the Sears Tower 44 times. According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, the average family tosses out $1,500 of food each year, adding up to the equivalent of $162 billion worth of food across the nation. And the impact goes beyond the financial: Wasted food uses up about 25 percent of the US water supply and produces 33 million cars' worth of greenhouse gases each year (in landfills, food waste releases methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide). In the meantime, one in six Americans doesn't have a steady supply of food."

Julia Lurie reports for Mother Jones September 16, 2015.

SEE ALSO:

"It's Time To Get Serious About Reducing Food Waste, Feds Say" (NPR)