Role Of Food Waste In America

Food waste is a big problem in this world. It is commonly overlooked and does not have enough attention paid to it. So many people suffer every day because we are wasting good food. People in our own country, the United States of America, are starving. Our country is rich enough in food to feed everybody. So why isn’t everyone getting food? Why are people starving? Why are there millions of starving people in Africa? In this paper, I will be discussing our world’s food waste and how we can attempt to solve it. In the United States of America, we are tossing 165 billion dollars worth of food into the trashcan. 40 percent of the food we produce is thrown away. That’s 31 million tons of food being thrown into the landfill. In the United Kingdom,
about 100 million tonnes of food are thrown away, which is predicted to rise to 120 million tonnes by the year 2020.
Every year, rich countries throw out about 222 million tonnes. Africa only produces 230 million tonnes of food per year. We are throwing away as much food as Africa makes per year. World hunger could end if we weren’t so careless with our food. There have been several ideas to end food waste. There are some ideas that I have, that I think could greatly help the preservation of our food. My ideas include using technology. We have developed our technology very much over the course of the last ten years. We could use that technology to help us save more of our food. One idea that I have to help us save food is creating a smart refrigerator. The refrigerator will scan your food item, tell you what it is, and tell you how many days it has left before reaching its expiration date. The smart refrigerator will also alert you a week before your food item expires so that you can either eat it, or donate it to a local food bank so that it will be distributed to families and people in need of it. Another idea that I had was the smart sticker. When items are placed on the shelf at a food store, they will have these stickers attached to them. This sticker will contain the items information.
When the consumer purchases item, the cashier scans the item, and all of its information will be printed on the receipt. The consumer will then know the items expiration date and a best day to eat the item. They will know these dates so that they will know when they should donate the item to the food bank, in case they don’t end up eating it. Another idea is improved packaging. Many items are tossed away because of damage received during transportation. Better packaging would prevent this damage and would also keep the item fresh. Food items such as fruit will begin to rot on their long shipments from country to country. With proper packaging, these fruits will stay fresh and won’t need to be thrown away. Another thing that would help reduce food waste is smaller portions of food. When we eat meals at a restaurant, the portions that we are served are too large for many people, and we end up throwing away a ton of food. If we had smaller portions, we would be able to eat all of the food, and there would be nothing to throw away. These ideas would significantly improve the consumption and saving of food.
There are also ways to encourage food companies to donate their expiring food items to their local food bank.
To make theses grocers want to make donations, the government could give them lower tax rates. The tax rate could lower each time the grocery store donated food to the food bank. Food grocers would donate a lot more food than they are now. A way to get the common people to donate to the food bank is by creating a tax credit system. Tax credits would give people a reason to donate their foods to the food bank . This would cause the government to loose some money, but it would largely cut food
waste. In this world, we waste a lot of food. We could be saving this food and ending world hunger. There are many different ways to end it. Many different possibilities. If scientists really wanted to, they could come up with solutions to world hunger. We as a society could be doing things differently to help in the ending of world hunger. Together, we can feed the hungry and put an end to food waste.