Food Waste

Every day, over 50 million Americans go to bed hungry. At the same time, we throw out tons of good, usable food. At home, lots of food is wasted because we buy a lot more than we can consume. At school cafeterias and grocery store, the unused food at the end of the day is often thrown away. Sadly, food in this country is so cheap and readily available that many of us can discard it without a second thought.

Discarded produce (The Independent)

Fortunately, there are some solutions. Stores like Trader Joe's donate their leftovers daily to food pantires and soup kitchens. Some school districts collect unopened items (like cookies or cracker packets) and donate them to the food bank at the end of the week. Programs like Food Shift make unused milk cartons from school cafeterias available for free to people in the community.

I think it would be good to have a food bin at school or in communities (like parks or social buildings) where people can drop off unused, sealed food containers, instead of having them sit at home until they expire. Also, I think the FUSD can also start donating extra food to pantries like the Tri City Food Bank. At the very least, we should make composting more common and easy, instead of sending our food waste to the landfill.