Welcome to Bay Disposal’s blog, where we strive to bring you helpful and life-changing tips, tricks, and information about how to live green. No matter what you believe, it can’t hurt to protect our home planet, right?

Let’s Save.

It’s no secret that Americans have a love affair with food—big portions, with lots of ingredients—and that we can be a bit wasteful. In this land of plenty, it’s easy to forget that you don’t actually need five avocados, even if they are on sale. Reducing Food waste is both the means and the end, as you’ll see.

150,000 tons of food are wasted in our nation each year, from every phase: farms/fisheries, processing, distribution, retail, restaurants, and households all wasting some food here and there. From supermarkets and other commercial distributors discarding perfectly good produce because of its appearance to healthy eaters chopping off broccoli stems, we’ve got a wastefulness epidemic.

Problems from wasted food:

• Rotting food clogs landfills, releases methane into the atmosphere
• 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions stem from food waste
• Land used for farming, production, etc.
• Water used for production
• Money wasted in transactions for food that will not be consumed/used

Benefits of reducing food waste:

• Food security/distribution
• Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions
• Removes unnecessary pressure on natural resources & environment (land/water)

How to help reduce food waste:

• Buy less – plan your meals, shop with a grocery list, and don’t go hungry
• Use more – use as much as possible of what you do buy
• Get seconds – rather than fill your plate, take smaller portions and go back if you want more after
• Store right – keep food in the correct conditions, and freeze anything you won’t be eating soon
• Compost it – build and use a compost for fruit and vegetable waste
• Get involved – join the fight against “ugly” produce discrimination

Together we can all save the world.

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