New Food in collaboration with John Hawthorne of Business Connect looks at the five main ways in which food waste is harming our beautiful planet every day.
It’s the secret shame of many Americans: The half-forgotten (or wholly forgotten) perishables in your refrigerator and pantry that have been overlooked, uneaten, and are now turning pretty colours or else giving off the fragrance of a corpse.
Those of us who feel pangs of guilt and upset over wasted food are sadly in good company: Some estimates reveal that Americans waste as much as 60 million tonnes of food a year (for various reasons, some simply because of extremely high standards set by American stores)! Given the plight of world hunger, this fact is shameful enough, but what many of us may not realise is that wasted food also has a harmful effect on the environment.
So that we might be better stewards of the earth we have been given, here are five biggest ways wasted food hurts the environment—and five ways we can combat this problem and make it better for millions of people worldwide.