| Brief | The problem of food waste is as easy to solve, as it is to overlook. While food plays a key role in shaping our identities and is highly celebrated in American society, each year up to 40% of food in the United States never gets eaten, translating to $218 billion lost, which includes the cost of food wasted on the consumer level, retail, wasted water, energy, fertilizers, cropland, and production costs.In addition to wasting precious resources, nearly all of the food waste ends up in landfills where it decomposes and releases methane, a form of climate pollution that is up to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In fact, food is the single largest contributor to U.S. landfills today. All this while one in eight Americans don’t have a steady supply of food to their tables.Consumers are responsible for more wasted food than grocery stores and restaurants, so changing household behavior is key to reducing the problem of food waste. To raise awareness about the economic and environmental impacts of wasted food and encourage Americans to take easy and actionable steps to reduce food waste in their homes, we created the national, fully integrated Save The Food campaign. The campaign assets tell consumers to “Cook it. Store it. Share it. Just don’t waste it.” and visit SaveTheFood.com to learn how to better plan, store, and cook their food. |