Each year, about 40 percent of all food in the United States goes uneaten. It’s just tossed out or left to rot. And that’s a fairly large waste of resources. All that freshwater and land, all that fertilizer and energy — for nothing. By one recent estimate, Americans are squandering the equivalent of $165 billion each year by rubbishing so much food.
But these statistics don’t tell the full story. How does the food actually get wasted? For that, here’s a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council that tries to track food waste up and down the system, from “farm to fork.” My colleague Dina ElBoghdady has already highlighted some of the report’s conclusions — including the fact that Europe does a better job of curtailing waste than the United States. But it’s worth looking at where food actually gets wasted each step of the way. So let’s follow the steps:
MORE: How the U.S. manages to waste $165 billion in food each year.