The world wastes one-third of all food produced for human consumption, which amounts to 1.3 gigatonnes of edible food each year¹. American families alone throw away between 14 and 25 percent of the food and beverages they buy². This is costing households between $1,365 to $2,275 each year².

Do you want to save money and help the planet by reducing your food waste?

Of course you do! But you are often busy, making it difficult to keep track of your kitchen. Sometimes you are late to discover that an ingredient will turn bad soon. Then you have the challenge of figuring out what you can make with it.

We want to help you find recipes to use up those foods. This is a blog of Yott Environmental, a website about sustainability. Lowering food waste is an accessible way for families to become more sustainable.

Each of our recipes use at least one ingredient on the most wasted foods list. The recipes are designed to be flexible by offering a choice of ingredients. For example, we may say you can use either soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce. You can choose according to what is in your kitchen!

The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) calculated food waste in Britain. We assume in our numbers below that Americans waste at the same rate per capita. The most wasted foods in America featured in our recipes are:

• Apples (22 million wasted every day)
• Bananas (7 million wasted every day)
• Bread (120 million slices wasted every day)
• Cheese (41,095 slices wasted every day)
• Chicken (1.175 million chickens wasted every day)
• Dairy (130,275 gallons of milk wasted every day)
• Leafy greens (1.1 million pounds of leafy greens every day)
• Potatoes (82,191 wasted every day)

Sources

1. FAO summary report on food wastage footprint
2. Washington Post article on American food waste

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