“We have a massive food waste problem in this country,” says Doing What Works producer Darrell Anderson. “It’s critical to the future of the planet that we solve it.” Darrell’s not only our producer but has hosted a long-running radio program covering not only agriculture but also food sourcing and safety. And while Katie and I had a bit of a learning curve when it came to just how much it bothers Darrell personally to waste food, we came around. In this edition of the show we talk about that evolution and why we hope you’ll start caring more about food waste, too.

Here are your show notes…

Officials from the United States Department of Agriculture say between thirty and forty percent of food is wasted [https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs].

“’How bad could throwing away one plastic water bottle be?’ five hundred million people wonder” is from The Onion [https://www.theonion.com/] -- though it may have been a different number of million people!

If we cut back on food waste, we’ll be able to meet global food needs through 2050 -- and that’s according to officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/35571/icod].

Officials from the Yale Center for Environmental Communication say food waste contributes to a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and estimate that between six and eleven percent of total emissions would be eliminated with zero food waste [https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/05/food-waste-has-crucial-climate-impacts/].