It’s What’s Outside that Counts
About 50 percent of food in the United States is wasted. Let that sink in. Half of all food produced for the country actually gets eaten. The rest of it—over 60 million tons each year—ends up in landfills. That’s the weight of four bags of flour per person, per month. Rotting food emits methane, a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to a warming climate.
And landfilled food is not the only environmental concern. “It’s not just what you buy or consume, but the resources used to put it on your plate,” says Celise Vaughn, a vice president at food and product packaging company Sealed Air. “When food is wasted, we lose everything that went into producing and transporting that food.” Those wasted resources include
