Tuesday, January 19, 2016

It's the methane folks

Often we think about food waste in terms of the people who could be fed with what we don't eat. "There are starving children in (insert country depending on your generation)!
The statistic given in the linked article is that we waste about 1200 calories per person per day. If you add in the amount we overeat (the majority of us sustaining overweight or obese bodies) you have to include that we could support a whole country of another 300 million people.
Of course, some of these wasted calories cannot be recovered or distributed. What they do is contribute to methane released from our landfills, which impacts climate and consequently agriculture around the world.
Here's a story about a new government initiative to encourage food recovery by religious congregations: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/18/463109192/thou-shalt-not-toss-food-enlisting-religious-groups-to-fight-waste

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