Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One Full Fridges and Family-Sized Foods 3 Too Much Food Is Tossed Away 5 How Much Is Too Much 5 Why So Much Food Gets Squandered at Home 8 Other Causes of Food Waste 9 Too Precious to Spoil 10 Dumpsters Filled with Food 12 Chapter Two Food Waste Feeds Global Warming 15 The Real Cost of Growing Food 16 Putting Food Waste on the Map 19 The Link between the Planet and Your Plate 19 Eat to Save the Planet 20 Mooo-ving toward Change 24 Beyond Beef 26 Chapter Three Food for All 29 Governments Can Help 30 Smart Thinking 32 Gleaning from Farms 34 Upcycling and Peeling Good 38 There’s an App for That 40 Food on the Move 41 Planting a Community Garden 42
nov nov nov BEFORE BEFORE BEFORE BEST BEST BEST Chapter Four Hungry for Change 45 Feeding Animals 45 More Than Slop 46 The Power of Food Waste 48 High-Tech Power Plants 48 Food Waste Outside Your Home 50 Composting 54 Common Ground Spotlight on San Francisco 56 Create Rich Soil at Home 57 Chapter Five Taking a Bite out of Food Waste at Home 61 First Things First How Much Food Are You Wasting 61 Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste 63 Good News Food-Waste Action Campaigns Are Working 73 Start a Food-Waste Campaign at School 74 Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference 76 My Food-Waste Journey Continues 77 Glossary 80 Acknowledgments 82 Index 83
You Thank
Introduction The idea for this book came from my fridge 900 million metric tons of food get Well from all the food in my fridge One thrown away each year That’s enough to day after buying groceries I opened the feed three billion people in a time when fridge door and realized I’d bought more at least 900 million suffer from hunger milk meat fruits and vegetables than my Most of this wasted food ends up rotting family could eat in the week I hadn’t stuck in landfills And that’s a huge problem The to my shopping list I hadn’t made a meal UN report also found that up to 10 percent plan Now I was faced with a problem how of global greenhouse gas emissions are was my family going to finish what we had caused by wasted food This means that While some families don’t have all the food we don’t eat contributes to enough to eat others have plenty and global warming What’s the connection food rots in the fridge or gets thrown out Keep flipping the pages to find out In fact food waste is a major problem The good news is that many countries all over the world Every day in grocery have promised to cut food waste in half by stores restaurants our homes and even 2030 It’s a big undertaking But if we all school cafeterias good food is tossed in work together we can meet this goal and the trash And not just a few leftover peas make sure hungry people have access to from your dinner plate or the crusts from food And by reducing food waste we’ll be your sandwich at lunch We’re talking fighting the climate crisis at the same time about massive amounts of usable food With some simple easy tips you can cut food in countries around the globe According waste starting today Good Food Bad Waste to a 2021 United Nations UN study of will teach you how and give you lots of global food waste almost a billion tons information to chew on 1
