Friday, May 4, 2012

How much food do you waste per month?

CBSNews posted an article on March 15, 2012 identifying that up to half of the worlds food goes to waste.  As unbelievable as this statistic may be, it is shockingly realistic.

"In 2010 alone, 33 million tons of food ended up in landfills and incinerators across the United States"

The average American throws out approximately $2000 worth of food per year, due to spoilage.  When we go shopping at the store, we all have the best intentions of only purchasing the food that we need.  But in some cases we find ourselves purchasing more food than we actually need or that we will consume between shopping trips.

Think about the amount of food you purchase that are perishable versus the foods that can be purchased that remain fresh for a longer period of time.  I thought about my purchases and what types of foods me and my family throw out most frequently, these items are mainly deli meats and prepackaged salads.

Let's face it, as much as you try to not waste food there are activities in the world that we can't control, power outages, appliance failures and just plain forgetting to consume a product before it expires.  Due to the economy we are trying to find ways to save money and waste less and in some cases we focus first on home improvement project, but let's not forget to also look at what we throwing into the garbage.

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