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US$6 billion in food is wasted every day!!!!

Lankan Ranger

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US$6 billion in food is wasted every day!!!!

The culture of waste and disposal, not only of resources but also energy and finished products, has suffered a blow in many societies. The new concept to make sparing use of natural products those available in the consumer market is gaining more and more new fans in an attempt to reverse the heavy damages caused by the improper use of scarce resources.

The idea to use and throw away and reuse what can be improved, to recycle everything that can be transformed into something new has changed since paradigms established long ago. Not flushing after little use and recycling almost everything are precepts that grace the idea of ​​sustainability. Essentially, these are words of a world order which we hope to at least balance, conscientious to our Mother Earth. As far as what not to waste is concerned, water and food are by far the "champions of waste."

What to recycle?

When it comes to recycling, it is worth asking: what should we recycle? The answer is simple: everything that we can. Components of urban materials, newspapers, magazines, and some types of paper (only one ton of recycled paper keeps 20 trees alive). Commercial packaging (cardboard and bottle caps), from glass (bottles, glasses, pots and shards) to plastics (pipes, tubes, PET) to clothes and shoes, tyres and even cars and aircraft. All this can be recycled.

Only in this last example, aviation, it is interesting to note that Boeing, Airbus and Alenia Aeronautica have been working to dismantle the idea of ​​aircraft efficiently reusing the most diversified high-value composite materials for the manufacture of lighter aircraft. The best estimate is that in this sector by 2023, more than 4,000 aircraft in operation today will no longer fly. In this "stock", 85% of the components can be reused.

The idea of ​​recycling is called the basis of energy savings, as opposed to disposal of the economy, at least over the last seven decades, which "produced" products and resources with the largest pile of discarded garbage in history.

Sharpening the debate in a recent article entitled "More Savings, Less Resources," Lester Brown points to the gains of the recycling process. Here, in detail, are some parts of of the summary. Consider that, according to Brown, " steel made from scrap consumes only 26% of energy compared to that made with iron ore. For aluminum, the figure is 4%. Plastic uses only 20%. And recycled paper, 64%, with far less chemicals used during the process. If the global recycling rate of these resources were equivalent to those already adopted by more efficient economies, carbon emissions would fall quickly. "

The most interesting point is to practise and propagate the process of recycling which permeates this procedure for nearly all productive sectors, generating considerable savings in raw materials and energy.

Notice the following: A third of world energy consumption is based on the activities of the industries of steel, plastic, cement and paper. In manufacturing, the petrochemical industry is the great "devouring" power on a global scale. Alone, the aluminum industry, another major consumer of energy, accounts for almost 20% of industrial energy use.

So... Recycling steel, widely used in automotive industries, household electronics and construction seems to be one of the most interesting outputs. As an example, let's see that in the United States virtually all cars are recyclable. There the idea of ​​leaving ******* cars in a used car junkyard is not conceived. To have an idea of ​​the importance of recycling, it is appropriate to point out that in the entire volume of a car almost 40% is composed of metal and plastic parts of good quality.

In some places, specifically the recycling of cars, there has been a decrease in the rate of robberies and thefts. Buenos Aires, since 2007, for example, has experimented with this exciting idea. Argentine insurers cede the stricken cars to the recycling center and receive 40% of profits from the sale of parts. The rate of vehicle thefts fell by 70% since the opening of the first unit of recycling vehicles. In Brazil, the entire fleet goes out of circulation each year and less than 2% is to address a new recycling facility.

Aside from cars, household appliances are also good options to go through the recycling process. Brown, in the sequence of the above-mentioned article, points out that "the rate of recycling of household appliances in the U.S. is 90%." In Europe, this figure approaches 95%.

Food waste

When it comes to domestic issues, leaving little side notes about the recycling, do we take note of food waste? In Brazil alone, according to estimates, 26 million tons of food are wasted every year. When we throw food in the garbage, we're playing with a bit of fertile land, clean water, oxygen, labor used, the time available. For every kilo of wheat "spoiled" also spoiled are 1,000 liters of water.

The culture of wasting a single product triggers a series of other acts of waste that sometimes are not counted. Unfortunately, according to the FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization), Brazil is among the 10 countries that waste more food in the world. About 30% of all agricultural produce goes to waste. That means tons of food on the table could be of use to more than 40 million Brazilians who are hungry every day. According to the Social Service of Commerce (SESC), "R$12 billion (6 billion USD) in food is thrown away daily, an amount sufficient to guarantee breakfast, lunch and dinner for 39 million people."

Unfortunately, every time we ignore the order to recycle and do not give due importance to the duty not to waste, whether we are speaking about food or supplies of any type, we are helping to destroy the house that welcomes us. Planet Earth, our only known address, is hurting more and more with each act of our full social and environmental irresponsibility. It is past time to change the game. Either recycle and avoid waste, or perish soon. The choice is ours!

Waste not, want not: 6 billion USD in food is wasted every day - English pravda.ru
 
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Simple math will reveal this entire article to be total B.S.

There are 300 million people in the USA. If we "throw away 6 billion in food daily" that means we throw away $20 per day for every man. woman, and child in the United States. My family of five would throw out $120 worth of food every day.

Can people not recognize how utterly ridiculous this claim is? I don't even CONSUME $20 worth of food every day, let alone throw it away.

When will such lame-a$$ propaganda end?
 
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Simple math will reveal this entire article to be total B.S.

There are 300 million people in the USA. If we "throw away 6 billion in food daily" that means we throw away $20 per day for every man. woman, and child in the United States. My family of five would throw out $120 worth of food every day.

Can people not recognize how utterly ridiculous this claim is? I don't even CONSUME $20 worth of food every day, let alone throw it away.

When will such lame-a$$ propaganda end?

The day the US is no longer the target of envy for many a nation.
 
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Kentucky harvest was formed when the founder found out how much food was wasted by the average American.

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We Pakistanis don't have to look far to see how much food is wasted at parties / weddings
 
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No one is denying food wastage is a problem, but it'll always be with mankind. Food is perishable. There is often no way to "ship" the food anywhere.

People everywhere need to be responsible with resources. But when people pull numbers like 6 billion $$ out of their rear ends, it becomes irritating.
 
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Many Americans order McDonalds, Taco Bells, and fast fooods every minutes lifestyles than cookings!
 
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Many Americans order McDonalds, Taco Bells, and fast fooods every minutes lifestyles than cookings!

Not sure what you are saying, here, but it is true Americans eat too much highly processed food. Any one concerned about long-term health should limit fast food to just a couple of times a month, IMO.

One smart nutritionist said "Buy food at the supermarket that is on the perimeter of the store. Avoid the middle." At a typical large American grocery store, the outer aisles have refrigerated areas that contain fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh meats, fresh bakery goods, yogurt, etc etc. In the middle are processed boxed garbage foods. I think this is smart.
 
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thats why i suffer daily to save it damn i can't throw it its hurt me very badly only in fast food and out of my home food wasted .in my home i save it like gold . i hate people who throw food. :angry:
 
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With all the 'social' programs we have here in this country (medicare, medicaid, food stamps, social security, social security etc; the whole social welfare system) that people feel they are 'entitled' to, & the rising government borrowing, I wouldn't be shocked if this were true. As a manufacturing/quality engineer who has worked in the Food & Beverages industry as well (for a shorter time than pharmaceutical manufacturing), I know for a fact that there is lot of wastage in the industry itself.
 
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0518MARTIN-1260x909.jpg


You’d never know it if you saw what was ending up in your landfill. As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way.

The study didn’t account for the explosion of ready-to-eat foods now available at supermarkets, from rotisserie chickens to sandwiches and soups. What do you think happens to that potato salad and meatloaf at the end of the day?

A more recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. All but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted.

The numbers seem all the more staggering now, given the cost of groceries and the emerging food crisis abroad.

After President Bush said recently that India’s burgeoning middle class was helping to push up food prices by demanding better food, officials in India complained that not only do Americans eat too much — if they slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, said one, “many people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plate” — but they also throw out too much food.

And consider this: the ******* food that ends up in landfills produces methane, a major source of greenhouse gases.

America’s Second Harvest — The Nation’s Food Bank Network, a group of more than 200 food banks, reports that donations of food are down 9 percent, but the number of people showing up for food has increased 20 percent. The group distributes more than two billion pounds of donated and recovered food and consumer products each year.

The problem isn’t unique to the United States.

In England, a recent study revealed that Britons toss away a third of the food they purchase, including more than four million whole apples, 1.2 million sausages and 2.8 million tomatoes. In Sweden, families with small children threw out about a quarter of the food they bought, a recent study there found.

And most distressing, perhaps, is that in some parts of Africa a quarter or more of the crops go bad before they can be eaten. A study presented last week to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development found that the high losses in developing nations “are mainly due to a lack of technology and infrastructure” as well as insect infestations, microbial growth, damage and high temperatures and humidity.

For decades, wasting food has fallen into the category of things that everyone knows is a bad idea but that few do anything about, sort of like speeding and reapplying sunscreen. Didn’t your mother tell you to eat all the food on your plate?

Food has long been relatively cheap, and portions were increasingly huge. With so much news about how fat everyone was getting — 66 percent of adult Americans are overweight or obese, according to 2003-04 government health survey — there was a compelling argument to be made that it was better to toss the leftover deep-dish pizza than eat it again the next day.

For cafeterias, restaurants and supermarkets, it was just as easy to toss food that wasn’t sold into trash bins than to worry about somebody getting sick from it. And then filing a lawsuit.

“The path of least resistance is just to chuck it,” said Jonathan Bloom, who started a blog last year called wastedfood.com that tracks the issue.

Of course, eliminating food waste won’t solve the problems of world hunger and greenhouse-gas pollution. But it could make a dent in this country and wouldn’t require a huge amount of effort or money. The Department of Agriculture estimated that recovering just 5 percent of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million people.

The Department of Agriculture said it was updating its figures on food waste and officials there weren’t yet able to say if the problem has gotten better or worse.

In many major cities, including New York, food rescue organizations do nearly all the work for cafeterias and restaurants that are willing to participate. The food generally needs to be covered and in some cases placed in a freezer. Food rescue groups pick it up. One of them, City Harvest, collects excess food each day from about 170 establishments in New York.

“We’re not talking about table scraps,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, explaining the types of wasted food that is edible. “We’re talking about a pan of lasagna that was never served.”

For food that isn’t edible, a growing number of states and cities are offering programs to donate it to livestock farmers or to compost it. In Massachusetts, for instance, the state worked with the grocery industry to create a program to set aside for composting food that can’t be used by food banks.

“The great part about this is grocers save money on their garbage bill and they contribute a product to composting,” said Kate M. Krebs, executive director of the National Recycling Coalition, who calls the wasting of food “the most wrenching issue of our day.”

The City of San Francisco is turning food waste from residents and restaurants into tons of compost a day. The city has structured its garbage collection system so that it provides incentives for recycling and composting.

There are also efforts to cut down on the amount of food that people pile on their plates. A handful of restaurant chains including T.G.I. Friday’s are offering smaller portions. And a growing number of college cafeterias have eliminated trays, meaning students have to carry their food to a table rather than loading up a tray.

“It’s sort of one of the ideas you read about and think, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ ” Mr. Bloom said.

The federal government tried once before, during the Clinton administration, to get the nation fired up about food waste, but the effort was discontinued by the Bush administration. The secretary of agriculture at the time, Dan Glickman, created a program to encourage food recovery and gleaning, which means collecting leftover crops from farm fields.

He assigned a member of his staff, Mr. Berg, to oversee the program, and Mr. Berg spent the next several years encouraging farmers, schools, hospitals and companies to donate extra crops and food to feeding charities. A Good Samaritan law was passed by Congress that protected food donors from liability for donating food and groceries, spurring more donations.

“We made a dent,” said Mr. Berg, now at the New York City hunger group. “We reduced waste and increased the amount of people being fed. It wasn’t a panacea, but it helped.”

With the current food crisis, it seems possible that the issue of food waste might have more traction this time around.

Mr. Bloom said he was encouraged by the increasing Web chatter about saving money on food, something that used to be confined to the “frugal mommy blogs.”

“The fundamental thing that I’m fighting against is, ‘why should I care? I paid for it,’ ” Mr. Bloom said. “The rising prices are really an answer to that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin.html?pagewanted=all
 
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As of 2011, 1.3 billion tons of food, about one third of the global food production, are lost or wasted annually.[1] Loss and wastage occurs on all steps in the food supply chain. In low-income countries most loss occurs during production, while in developed countries much food – about 100 kilograms (220 lb) per person and year – is wasted at the consumption stage

In the UK, 6.7 million tonnes per year of wasted food (purchased and edible food which is discarded) amounts to a cost of £10.2 billion each year. This represents costs of £250 to £400 a year per household.[43]

A study by the University of Arizona in 2004 indicated that 14-15 per cent of US edible food is untouched or unopened, amounting to $43 billion worth of discarded, but edible, food.[44] Another survey, by the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, found that 93 percent of respondents acknowledged buying foods they never used.

The total food waste by consumers in industrialized countries (222 million tons) is almost equal to the entire food production in sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons).

Food waste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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my parents always used to use guilt on me -- if ever i was unable to finish my plate.....they say "put what u gonna eat only"


but when you fill your plate, dont waste the food.....coz there are hundreds of millions of people out there who would do anything just to have a few morsels of food ---the ones which we sometimes discard and waste. It all adds up.



after any meal large or small, say Alhamdolillah. Thanks be to God.



why do you think we do Ramadan every year? Self-control, discipline, sympathy/empathy for the poor --among many many other things. (some Muslims just dont get it --they fatten themselves once the fast is over and actually gain weight during the month!)
 
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We Pakistanis don't have to look far to see how much food is wasted at parties / weddings

correct here. If you look at some desi wedding videos in you yube..you will find out that too much money peoples waste at wedding..not just for food but for all other KanJ*R khana as well :)
 
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isnt there a ban on large servings of food at weddings now, in big cities?

austerity measures
 
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Simple math will reveal this entire article to be total B.S.

There are 300 million people in the USA. If we "throw away 6 billion in food daily" that means we throw away $20 per day for every man. woman, and child in the United States. My family of five would throw out $120 worth of food every day.

Can people not recognize how utterly ridiculous this claim is? I don't even CONSUME $20 worth of food every day, let alone throw it away.

When will such lame-a$$ propaganda end?


Of course you are not taking into account hundreds of thousands of restaurants that throw away tons of food every night. There is enough food thrown away every night the would feed all the hungry and homeless people in the US, many times over . I migrated to the US in 1976 and was shocked to see the amount of food thrown in the dumpsters everynight, by the fast food joints. The main issue here is not logistics but fear of being sued. The restaurants are more afraid of being sued so they prefer to throw away that food ( which btw is still fresh at the end of the day) rather than have a lawsuit at their hands.



[/QUOTE] When will such lame-a$$ propaganda end? [/QUOTE]


Why are you being so defensive , Chogy
 
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