New Food Waste Reports

Background Info

The above mentioned articles all refer to the fact that, although Americans are concerned about the food waste problem in general, they are not too concerned about the environmental impact of food waste. That’s a problem. That’s a lot of food produced just to decay and emit gasses into the environment from our dumps! We feel that everyone should not only be concerned, but also try to do their part to help since food waste is reportedly taking the largest share of our increasingly limited landfill space. Specifically, methane gas production from decaying food is an environmentally dangerous gas. Throwing away food is the biggest contributor to methane gas production – whether during production, retail sale or as a consumer of food.

As part of this solution, we also love to see when imperfect foods are creatively re-purposed. Articles like this one, also posted today, where distilleries are using “trash” to produce some really cool products like fruited spirits really make us happy :). These distilleries are now buying produce that was previously just tossed by the growers because retailers won’t buy produce with imperfections. Imperfections can be cut out and overripe fruit is actually full of sweet juice – both types might be improper on a grocery shelf, but actually make the best smoothies and other drinks.

EatByDate readers are already helping by learning about how long foods really last past their best-by dates, how to store foods properly to make them last longer and how to repurpose foods. Let’s all keep spreading the word and keep doing our part to help!