Food that goes to the landfill becomes a significant source of methane gas. The global food system is responsible for one-third of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions. Along with the food itself, the transportation used on food that will utimtely be wasted conturbutes a significant amount of carbon dioxide. Methane and carbon dioxde are both greenhouse gases that absorbs the sun's heat, warming the atmosphere.
Food waste contributes to hunger in many countries since nearly one-third of all food produced each year is squandered or spoiled before it can be consumed. This problem roots from the fact that food is unproperly distrubuted, and overbought by many people. The food discarded by retailers and consumers alone would be more than enough to feed the world’s 870 million hungry people.
The problem with food waste goes much farther than simply the food itself. All the resources going torwards producing and transporting the unused food is also wasted. Agriculture accounts for 70% of the world's freshwater use. To visualize it, throwing a kilo gram of beef is equivalent to wasting 50,000 liters of water. 1.4 billion hectares of land worldwide is used for food that gets wasted. Lots of energy is used to conserve, perserve and transpot food which in concequence causes gas emissions which ultimatley connects to pollution. Along with the resources used to grow or produce, transport and store food, the labor invested to prepare food is all wasted when we toss that food in the garbage. In the end due to the fact that many resources are needed to produce food; everytime someone is wasteful food is not the only thing being wasted.
In the United States alone, about 40 percent of all food, worth an estimated $165 billion, is wasted.(new york times) In Britain, which has some of the most comprehensive data on food waste available, each family discards, on average, 700 pounds, or $1,170, worth of food a year.(new york times) This ultimatly shows how food waste is not only affecting you as a consumer, but also the economy as a whole since a lot of money is wasted in the production and the buying of food.