Americans only eat close to half of the food that is purchased, and toss the rest in the garbage. Over $150 billion worth of food is thrown away by Americans every year. The way to fix this problem of food waste is by implementing government regulations and having proper information about the food that’s purchased. According to Dana Gunders from the Natural Resources Department Council, “...40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. This not only means that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also that the uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills as the single largest component of U.S. municipal solid waste where it accounts for a large portion of U.S. methane emissions.” American’s need to use their food to the fullest to keep the environment healthy. …show more content…
Gunders reports, “American families throw out approximately 25 percent of the food and beverages they buy. The cost estimate for the average family of four is $1,365 to $2,275 annually.” Citizens waste their own money, but also a lot of food. Consumers purchase way more food than they actually eat, and as time goes on so does the waste. All the food they don’t end up using gets added to an everlasting pile of garbage. Danyi Qi and Brian Roe write, “In 2010, 133 billion pounds of edible food at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten (1,249 calories per person per day) with about two-thirds of this waste attributed to consumers. This represents not only a significant waste of resources, but also substantial negative environmental externalities as 95% of food waste enters U.S. landfills.” America produces more food than consumed and this is becoming a huge problem. People have been working on different solutions to this