Food Waste in the U.S.

​Recent info is now available on the huge amount of food wasted in the United States.

Here are highlights from the Dec 18, 2025 Greenbelt (Maryland, USA) News Review, in an article by Tom Taylor titled, "Reducing Food Waste Is Holiday Gift to the Community. Planet."

ReFED. a non-profit organization dedicated to food waste reduction, estimated that on Thanksgiving Day 2024 alone, 320 million pounds of food would be wasted.  This is equal to $550 million worth of uneaten food discarded and to 267 million meals that could have been served to people indeed.  [Here's the link to ReFED -- Food Waste Solutions & Statistics - Reducing Food Waste in the U.S.

Production of this [wasted food] also meant wasted use of 16.2 trillion gallons of water (more than the total freshwater use of California and Idaho combined) and 140 million acres of US cropland (equivalent to the combined size of California and New York State.)

[And] discarded food waste comprises 22 percent of residential waste in the Prince George's County (Maryland, USA) landfill according to the most recent waste composition study (2022).  

And, here's a link to Food Rescue US -- a group working to reduce waste -- as shared by Nan Meneely.
https://share.google/6cSnQPCQLfWfZnzYg

Here's what Nan says about food waste --
"I found the equivalent of New Haven's Haven's Harvest organization, for whom I volunteered. Donating, writing, speaking out about the devastation of hunger nationally and globally are all things we know we can do. I'm here just to say that volunteering for this kind of organization brings a kind of gratification only human interaction can give. When I delivered the leftovers from Conn College (poached salmon once!) to New London's Community Meals and the Covenant House shelter there, I got the kind of face to face thanks and grateful hugs that both made me cry and were my armor against the sense of futility our politics breed. It's a giving thing from and to the volunteer. "