In the essay, On Dumpster Diving, Eigher describes college students as wasteful, and
careless. In a way, Eigher’s statement about college students is fair. Even though students are a
small contributor to food waste, they are still contributing. Part of the problem is denying that
we’re wasteful. In order to find solutions for our trash problem, we must first admit that we are
wasteful.
Eigher is certainly not wrong when he says college students are wasteful. The average
college student wastes 142 lbs of food per year, and with 20.5 million students in the US, the
amount of food wasted definitely racks up. Part of the problem is buying too much food. The
first step in reducing our food waste, is to become more aware of what you're
…show more content…
Waste is a world-wide problem, with food waste being the main contender. In the United
States alone, 30% of all food is thrown away each year. That's about 161 billion dollars worth of
food! This food could be used to feed families in need, or used in composts. There are many
organizations that directly try to help reduce food waste. One of these organizations, called the
Last Name 2
U.S Food Waste Challenge, calls together many colleges, farms, restaurants, and local
governments to reduce food waste by improving storage, marketing, development, and cooking
methods, along with recovering the unused food for use in food banks or bioenergy. By 2015
there were over 400 participants and they expect to have over a thousand by 2020. In addition to
organizations like these, as an individual you could try to reduce food waste by giving away
unused food, or simply not buying too much food in the first place.
In conclusion, Eigher's opinion on college students and wastefulness is definitely fair.
Everyone is wasteful, but it doesn't have to be a problem. If everyone comes together to reduce
waste, we could put a dent in carbon emissions and the amount of trash in our landfills. It
The USDA claims that each year, 25.9 million tons of America’s food is thrown away, the equivalent to a quarter of the total amount produced. Nationally, the wasted food is a damaging financial setback, amounting to $1 billion just to get rid of during a time of ascending food prices, nonetheless (Oliver, 2007). Food waste has skyrocketed since 1970 at an astonishing 50% increase rate, yet according to the FAO, one-sixth of America doesn’t get enough to eat.
With the seemingly unstoppable growth of the world’s population and a projected global population of nine billion by 2050, the matter of whether or not there will be enough food to support the world’s populace is brought into question (Parfitt, et al., 2010). However, amid the concern for an adequate food supply, there is an immense amount of food waste produced by the world, including the United States. In fact, “according to the Natural Resources Defense Council as much as 40 percent of all food produced in the United States never gets eaten and typically ends up in the landfills or goes unharvested in the field “(King, 2015).
"Food Waste: Causes, Effects, and Solutions." Farm Together Now The Book and Blog. N.p., 08 Nov. 2014. Web. 04 May 2016.
Although some people are not aware of this problem, generating food is quite expensive, because it wastes energy, fresh water and natural resources during its growth, package and delivering. Furthermore, some scientists have found that decomposing uneaten food produces high levels of methane emissions. The world's population is growing extremely fast. As a result, if humans keep on wasting food at the same pace as today, the waste of generating food will increase proportionally, (Kruszelnicki, 2012).
In the U.S., we are blessed with a sufficient amount of resources, especially food. Food is literally at everyone’s fingertips; people can order food efficiently off of their cellphones, and due to this abundance, it has caused many Americans to be very wasteful with their food. According to feedingamerica.org, “An estimated 25 – 40% of food grown, processed and transported in the US will never be consumed.” Not only that, but rotting food causes more greenhouses gases to be released in the air
These countries raise awareness among different industries, retailers and consumers to find beneficial use for food that is normally thrown away in order to reduce their food waste.
Three government policy solutions to the issue of food waste in the United States involve the Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance, the Fighting Hunger Incentive Act, and the National Food Waste Assessment. These three policy
Food waste is defined as food that can be consumed but for whatever reason goes uneaten. It was first addressed in 1977 when a report was sent to congress from the General Accounting Office. Within the report the United States Department of Agriculture’s role in food waste as well as several other aspects of food waste such as pollution and growing populations are still relevant today were spoken of (Buzby et al. 1). However in the years following the publication of this report, food waste has not lessened and instead has exponentially worsened from twenty percent in 1977 to forty percent as of 2012 (Finn et al.
who are poor and hungry”. In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30 to 40
While the world’s farmers produce enough food to feed the planet, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is not really consumed. Globally, there exists up to 1.3 billion metric tons of uneaten food very year. And in addition to that, growing and transporting that food is estimated to create 3.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, which makes wasted food one of the world’s largest emission contributor.
Food waste is something that affects us all. It happens anywhere food has a presence; the grocery store, restaurants, in our homes, at schools, on farms, in production and even in transportation. It affects people everywhere; those living oceans away and those that share our boarders, people living across America and throughout Utah, businesses and households alike.
If someone in the U.S buys 90 watermelons, how many of those watermelons will he throw away by the end of the week? According to organizations like the Food and Agricultural organization, one-third. Now 30 watermelons out of 90 are already is a wasteful example, but when considering the effect of the total amount around not only in the U.S but most developed countries food waste, it's an insane and ridiculous amount of loss. The effects of food waste have huge impacts, not only for the fact that the food being waste isn’t being provided to people in need, but it is also both a financial problem and environmental issue. A lot of organization trying to teach households how to reduce or even stop food waste, some have
In order to ensure sustainability in the community, the community will need to understand that simple things such as just food waste can contribute to climate change. In Greenbiz Magazine, Chaffee talks about how food waste is currently contributing to about 35 percent of the global greenhouse gas footprint. This in numbers equates to $750 billion dollars of food wasted annually along with 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually (Chaffee (2014). In order to obtain and prolong sustainability within our community local
In an age of plenty, there continues to be considerable and intolerable inefficiencies that generate extreme consequences in this world. Food loss is a pure example of this. Food loss represents the edible amount of food that is available for human consumption but is not consumed for any reason, which is discarded towards the front of the food supply chain, including harvest, post-harvest, and processing (Lipinski 2013). The production of the food in the United States is inefficient because of its inability to create and process food without generating excessive amounts of waste. In the United States alone, about 40 percent of its food is wasted daily – much of it due to ineffectual food production processes. In and of
The issue of food waste is one that many people might not consider to be serious, but it is critical to the environment that a solution is devised. Fortunately, there are many simple things that people all over the world can do to keep the Earth healthy. First, if farmers and agricultural employees would prevent overgrazing, pesticide pollution, and over plowing, water would be saved, and the general health of the