“About 37% of food waste occurs in retail stores and food
services”

The United States alone wastes about 37 million metric ton of food per year. A high percentage of that comes from dining places such as educational institutions, and culinarily businesses. This is the continuation made by restaurants and grocery stores over producing or order too much food. Especially restaurant businesses that typically wastes about “4-10% of purchased food before it reaches the costumer.” That’s a high percentage especially knowing that percentage of food wastage happens during the preparation process.

However, we must also take into consideration that 21% of food in restaurants is not being eaten. Now we must ask to ourselves why are culinary business one of the highest food wasting places, well there’s many reasons some of those reasons are: the improper handling of food, over-preparation, and excessive portions and leftovers. The main contributor to this is restaurants that offer large plates in al you can eat type of places which encourages people to take more food than what they can really consume.

“30 to 40 percent of all food is not eaten”

Why should this issue be address well according to Jon Frandsen the ReFED reported that the United States spends “about $218 billion annually to grow, manufacture, process, distribute and then dispose of food that is not eaten.” Which is relatively a lot of money in a financial term. Now looking at what The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated about food waste is that almost
“21.6 percent of the garbage shipped to municipal landfills and incinerators, making it the largest single type”.

Not only is it impacting our economy but our environment as well. Which is essentially a problem because no states like Vermont who have applied a law that bans organic waste to businesses that produced more than 104 tons of organic waste. States like California and Massachusetts follow the same structure as the Vermont law. It’s time to be aware and help out with this Issue.

Frandsen, Jon. “Trying to Reverse Americans’ Rotten Record on Food Waste.” The Pew Charitable Trusts , STATELINE, 16 May 2017, www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/05/16/trying-to-reverse-americans-rotten-record-on-food-waste.

Pak Nina., Potts D. Matthew., Sakaguchi Leo. “Tackling the issue of food waste in restaurants: Options for measurement method, reduction and behavioral change”. Journal of Cleaner Production, Science Direct,Volume 180, Pages 430-436, ElSEVIER, 10 April 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.12.136