‘I waste food, so what?’
That’s one reaction I get when I tell people that I’m researching food waste. Countering that argument from a logical perspective can be difficult, as I have a gut reaction against squandering (as do many people).
On that logical path, limiting food waste matters because farming and freight uses oil, water, time and money, pollutes the air […]

From Reed College to the National Review, we’re really spanning the political spectrum this week. The conservative magazine has pretty fair article on how the Federal School Lunch Program wastes food and money.
Wasted food costs the government $600 million every year, with fruits and vegetables accounting for 42 percent of that waste.
This G.A.O. report supplies those figures. […]

In the Department of Unsubstantiated Claims, this post says America wastes 70 percent of its food! Now, I’m the first person to say we waste too much food, but that sourceless number takes things a bit too far. (I say ’more than 40 percent,’ as the University of Arizona anthropologist Timothy Jones estimates between 40 and […]

The media just loves the freegan story. And why wouldn’t they? The idea that people can subsist on what we throw away really intrigues people. This BBC article has some interesting U.K. data packed into one paragraph:
Each year 6.7 million tonnes of food is thrown out. Half is perfectly edible and in a lifetime its estimated […]

Americans don’t eat about 25 percent of what they bring into their home. (That number comes from an interview I did with William Rathje, the former director of the University of Arizona’s Garbage Project.)
How do we waste a quarter of the food we bring home? A decent chunk of that comes from buying too much […]

Whenever the discussion of food waste comes up, the 27 percent figure soon follows. According to the USDA’s helpful research wing–the Economic Research Service (ERS)–that amount of the edible food available for human consumption in the US at retail, restaurant and consumer levels is “lost to human use.” 
My 3 cents:
1. It’s incomplete. It only counts food […]

Let’s look at another figure from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) study. The ESRC study counts 17 million tonnes of British food waste annually. Fareshare, the national charity that redistributes excess food, says almost one-fourth of that is perfectly edible when it’s thrown away.
To subtract the ‘es’ from 17 million tonnes, we multiply a bit to arrive at […]

Last week, Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) released a study called Consumption: Reducing, Reusing and Recycling. Because I’m slow at math, I’m just now pondering its import.
My first instinct is to compare Britons’ food waste to ours. The ESRC study reports that the “Every year British consumers each waste £424 on food they do not eat.” […]

The National Restaurant Asociation’s 2007 Restaurant Show concluded Tuesday. While I wasn’t able to attend–they make journalists jump through many, many hoops–apparently environmental awareness was a big theme there.
Exhibitors displayed plenty of recycling innovations like compostable cups made from corn. Much more exciting, though, LeanPath, Inc. unveiled its ValuWaste product. This product assesses the composition of food waste […]

Most of us can remember the euphoria of zipping out the school door for…RECESS! Yet, that rush often means uneaten food is tossed in the trash.
Studies have found that when lunch is after recess, elementary school students eat more and waste less–about 30 percent less (recess-before-lunch-powerpoint.ppt). And according to a 1996 survey, 78 percent of cafeteria managers cited “attention on recess, […]