Food Waste
Household food trash in New York, NY, April 2008. Photo credit: petrr, Wikimedia Commons.
Introduction
This page explores food waste and its possible solutions.
Messages and Resources on Christian Restorative Justice, Environment, and Health
A practical Study and Action Guide for use by small groups discussion or personal reflection. The guide covers topics that are actionable on the personal and policy levels: sugar’s impact on our bodies and sugar corporations’ truth-telling and accountability, corn and corn subsidies creating over-supply, plastic and its biological impact on animals and humans, the true cost of meat in terms of soil depletion and air pollution, and food waste and the practices which can diminish it.
Other Resources on Food Waste
Wikipedia, Food Waste (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia, Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act of 1996 (Wikipedia) Important because it removes legal liability from donating food.
US Dept of Agriculture, Food Waste Challenge (USDA)
Society of St. Andrew, Food Waste in America. Society of St. Andrew. good ministry of feeding people, not landfills.
Jonathan Bloom, American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half its Food (and What To Do About It). De Capo Lifelong Books | Amazon page, Aug 2011.
Peter Lehrner, A Recipe for Cutting Food Waste. TED Talk, Mar 4, 2013. A 15 minute talk.
Justin E. Burt, Food Waste at Each Life Cycle. Resilience, Dec 6, 2013. Great infographic.
Peg Leg Films, Just Eat It. FoodWasteMovie.com, Mar 2014. About food waste; a couple lives off of discarded food for 6 months.
NET Nebraska, Tossed Out: Food Waste in America. NET Nebraska video, Sep 26, 2014. A 30 min documentary; encouraging because it explores concrete solutions.
Elizabeth Royte, One-Third of Food Is Lost or Wasted: What Can Be Done. National Geographic, Oct 13, 2014.
Roff Smith, How Reducing Food Waste Could Ease Climate Change. National Geographic, Jan 22, 2015.
Edward Delman, Should It Be Illegal for Supermarkets to Waste Food? The Atlantic, May 29, 2015. It's illegal in France - why not the US? See also Joe McCarthy, France Becomes First Country to Ban Supermarket Food Waste. Global Citizen, Feb 5, 2016.
John Oliver, Food Waste. Last Week Tonight, Jul 19, 2015.
PressTV Documentaries, British Supermarket Waste. PressTV, Sep 21, 2015.
Ulla Herbst, Technology Stops Food Waste in India. Herbst & Herbst, Nov 16, 2015.
Rob Greenfield, How to End the Food Waste Fiasco. TEDx Teens, Feb 2, 2016. very good for teens, simpler presentation.
Elizabeth Royte, How 'Ugly' Fruits and Vegetables Can Help Solve World Hunger. National Geographic, Mar 2016.
Janelle Nanos, Daily Table is on a Mission to Stop Food Waste and Feed the Hungry. Boston Globe, May 13, 2016. A great example of a store that rescues food from other stores
Adam Chandler, Why Americans Lead the World in Food Waste. The Atlantic, Jul 15, 2016.
Elayne Allen and Daren Bakst, How the Government Is Mandating Food Waste. The Daily Signal, Aug 19, 2016.
WP BrandStudio, Solving the Problem of Food Waste. Washington Post, May 2017.
Brian Palmer, Week 120: Trump Can’t Even Run a Garbage Dump Properly. OnEarth, May 10, 2019. Largest sources of methane emissions: (1) oil and gas drilling; (2) livestock; (3) garbage landfills. Meanwhile, Trump proposes slashing the EPA budget, while the U.S. refuses to sign any agreement protecting Arctic areas from drilling.
Business Insider, Why Millions of Potatoes Are Being Thrown Away During the Pandemic. Business Insider, Jun 28, 2020. Restaurant closures caused a glut of potatoes, causing the price of potatoes to crash.
Dee-Ann Durbin, Fight to Curb Food Waste Increasingly Turns to Science. Associated Press, Dec 9, 2022.
CNBC, We Turned Leftover Restaurant Food Into A $162 Million/Year Business. CNBC Make It, Nov 16, 2024. Too Good To Go is on a mission to eliminate food waste on a global scale. Its app connects users to retailers selling surprise bags of leftover food at the end of the day. In 2023, the Danish company brought in about $162 million in revenue.
Other Resources on Waste, Recycling
The Synesis Journal: A Journal of Science, Technology, Ethics, and Policy
The Story of Stuff. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2007.
The Story of Bottled Water. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2010.
The Story of Cosmetics. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2010.
The Story of Electronics. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2010.
The Story of Solutions. The Story of Stuff Project video, 2013.
Stephen Rosenman, Buy Trashed US Ecology and Consolidate a Niche Market. Seeking Alpha, Dec 31, 2014.
Peter Holley, Decades of Human Waste Have Made Mount Everest a 'Fecal Time Bomb'. Washington Post, Mar 3, 2015.
Tim Maughan, Dystopian Lake Filled by the World's Tech Lust. (BBC, Apr 2, 2015.
Reynard Loki, America is a Wasteland: The U.S. Produces a Shocking Amount of Garbage. Salon, Jul 15, 2016.
Syed Faraz Ahmed, The Global Cost of Electronic Waste. The Atlantic, Sep 29, 2016.
Sara Barnes, Sweden’s Recycling Is So Revolutionary, The Country Is Running Out Of Trash. Buzz Worthy, Nov 15, 2016.
Susan Brink, Report: Pollution Kills 3 Times More Than AIDS, TB, and Malaria Combined. NPR, Oct 19, 2017.
Brian Clark Howard, Five Myths About Recycling. Washington Post, Apr 20, 2018.
PBS News Hour, In the U.S., 30 to 40 Percent of Food is Wasted. California Aims to Change That. PBS News Hour, Nov 27, 2019.
Second Thought, Is Capitalism Actually Efficient?. Second Thought, Jul 16, 2021. food waste, declining infrastructure like Texas’ electrical system and the Miami condo complex collapse, climate change. See also Paul Constant, Kroger Closed Grocery Stores Rather Than Give Workers a $4 Raise. Now It's Padding Shareholders' Pockets With a $1 Billion Stock-buyback Scheme.. Business Insider, Jul 16, 2021.
Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll, America's Toxic Food System. Some More News, Aug 9, 2023. Why corn is in nearly everything we eat, how factory farms are bad for consumers and the environment, and why capitalism makes it so hard to eat healthy.
Lisa Patel and Linda Rudolph, Supporting Climate, Health, and Equity under the Farm Bill. New England Journal of Medicine, Oct 26, 2023.
Christian Restorative Justice, Environment, and Health: Topics:
This page is part of our section on the Environment, which explores the following topics: Animal Antibiotics; Animal Extinction; Climate Change; Coal, Gas, Oil; Corn; Food and Nutrition Misc; Food Waste; Health Care Systems; Lead, Mercury, Heavy Metals; Marijuana; Meat’s True Cost; Pesticides; Plastics; Renewable Energy; Sugar; Tobacco; Water; Wheat.
Christian Restorative Justice Critique of the Right: Domestic Policy Topics:
This page is part of our section Critique of the Right, which engages the following topics: Banking and Finance examines the economic and political power of financial institutions; Bioethics discusses abortion policy; Business and Economics examines economic theories, taxes, housing, environment, corporate law, labor law, automation, and inequalities of wealth and power; Civil Unions makes the Christian case for civil unions for all and removing marriage from the culture wars; Criminal Justice examines crime statistics and definition, policing, prosecution, sentencing, prisons, and reintegration; Education examines public education and conservative resistance to it; Environment and Health highlights the many challenges we face related to animals, climate change, food, and health systems; Government Corruption spotlights political compromises and dealings contrary to the public good; Gun Rights examines gun policies and rhetoric; Media spotlights failures of, and possible fixes to, left-wing or left-leaning media; Power and Politics highlights the impact of racial considerations and racism on political campaigns, voting rights, public investments, and other political procedures; Race examines the impact of white supremacy on virtually every aspect of American life.
Christian Restorative Justice Critique of the Right: Philosophical Influences:
