Americans throw out a lot of perfectly good food — about $1,600 for a typical family per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
On a local level, many of us have heard of grocery stores throwing out food because it is nearing the “sell by” date… but we don’t often hear about the waste generated by food manufacturers.
Salinas Valley, California Farm Fields
Monterey County is the top producer of salad greens in the U.S. The bag salad was invented here, and many people now opt to buy these plastic bag salad mixes instead of a head of lettuce. It’s convenient, and perfect for our busy lifestyles.
It is understandable that farms can produce a surplus of food, and that sometimes, the excess bagged salad greens nearing the “sell by” date (if they cannot or do not donate to local food banks) must be sent to the municipal dump.
And just how much goes to the dump is the focus of National Public Radio’s (NPR) Allison Aubrey’s report on the Salinas Valley and the bags of salad greens that do end up in the dump.
I’ve included this NPR report on food waste to my earlier post on Iceberg lettuce and posting here.
Photo by Allison Aubrey via NPR’s Food News Program “The Salt”
You can listen to the audio of the report below.
Note: If the audio does not play, you can link to the text version of Allison Aubrey’s report on food waste and the “Landfill of Lettuce” here (What happens to salad past its prime).
I am surprised to learn how much garbage we are adding to our waste stream through this industry.
In light of the technology we have these days, it is disturbing that we have this much waste. Even more disturbing is the precious water wasted to grow food that is not eaten (especially that we are in our 4th year of drought), the addition of more garbage (that should be composted) to our landfills, and subsequent (and unnecessary) release of more methane gas to our atmosphere.
Hopefully, this industry is creating systems that minimizes this food waste. Reports like this one certainly help to highlight these problems.
Have you heard of similar food waste stories, whether through local grocery stores or food manufacturers near where you live? Do you know what they are doing about it or have suggestions?
Field of greens, Monterey County, California
Related:
- Post on the type and amount of trash generated by Americans from the Native Leaf blog
- Lolako.com article on Iceberg Lettuce and the industry posted for 2015 International Year of Soils — designated by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and in support of the Earth-Friendly Chronicler’s Blogging Challenge. (See this post from http://justanothernatureenthusiast.org/2015/04/19/unless-earth-friendly-friday-soil/ for more information.)