Food Waste In America

Words: 1042
Pages: 5

Throwing away a semi-brown banana or ignoring the bruised apple on the display stand at the supermarket is such an easy act to perform. No one wants to buy the unattractive food. A consumer never wants the spherical fruit to have an abnormal lump or a carrot to have a second point, and as a result, the food is left to go bad in the store, unconsumed. The abnormalities of an item determine its fate straight into the landfills filled with other products similar to itself. At first this is no big deal; however, when thousands of stores-- and restaurants-- across America discard food, every little piece will start to pile up. Decomposing foods release gas emissions into the atmosphere and costs America enormous amounts of money in wasted resources. Both cause extreme impacts on the environment and economy of America, and there is no one to blame but the picky consumers and policy burdened companies. Food waste is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and fought against.
Food waste is food that has been
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Rotting food in landfills counts for about eighteen percent of methane emissions produced in the United States (Dahl 181). Eighteen percent is a massive amount of emissions coming from apples and cheeseburgers. Methane gas emissions are approximately twenty percent more potent than carbon dioxide, and food waste counts for one of the larger sources of methane emissions (“Reducing Wasted”). Taking action to reduce the amount of food thrown away can greatly lower America’s carbon footprint and the amount of methane gases produced (“Reducing Wasted”). Reducing the amount of food waste in America can cause an immense butterfly effect, altering the environment, economy, and could even decrease the amount of hunger in the