Thanksgiving is the holiday that reminds all of as eaters to be grateful, especially for the season’s bounty provided by farmers, farm laborers, chefs, and food service workers. But, unfortunately, we also waste an astonishing amount of food.
Each year, consumers purchase over 700 million pounds of turkey, according to the National Turkey Federation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that 35 percent of the meat purchased does not get eaten–ending up in landfills, along with sweet potatoes, green beans, pumpkin pie, and other holiday fare.
Around the globe, roughly one-third of the food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted. This amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year–which is enough to feed the nearly 1 billion people who are hungry today. A report by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition found that 110 kg of edible food is wasted in households in the United States, 108 kg in Italy, 99 kg in France, 82 kg in Germany, and 72 kg in Sweden.
While food waste presents some serious moral challenges, it’s also an environmental issue. The U.N. Environment Programme reports that the food wasted annually is responsible for adding 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gasses to the planet’s atmosphere.
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Thankfully, organizations like the World Resources Institute (WRI), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Feedback, and the coalition of funders and organizations called ReFED are fighting to put an end to food waste by measuring food loss and setting goals to prevent it. WRI, for example, launched the first-ever Accounting and Reporting Standard for food loss and waste this year, and they are champions of the Sustainable Development Goal that aims to cut per capita global food waste in half. And ReFED produced this video highlighting food waste in the U.S.