Supermarkets teeming with aisles offering any culinary commodity that could ever be desired. Trader Joe’s trips, Target runs, a last minute stop at Giant for fresh milk–the options are endless. From crunchy Cheetos to the iconic baguette, food is an integral and defining part of society. Everyone can partake in the joy of food no matter their differences and all humans need food to survive. However, society is often so focused on the product that the full lifeline of the product is ne- glected. Not only is there an environmen- tal footprint for producing the food and transporting it to the dinner plate, there is also an equal impact from discarding the leftovers. Everyone is familiar with having bigger eyes than their stomach. While this hyperbole accurately captures the conun- drum of getting too much food, it omits the devastating environmental impact from such actions: food waste.

Food waste is a major issue prev- alent throughout all areas of the globe. Economically, it is simply disheartening where a third of the food produced for human consumption (1.3 billion tons to be exact) is wasted. Additionally, more than 400 billion dollars worth of food is wasted each year in the United States alone. Not only is it a cost deficit, but food waste is also an inherently ethical issue in which 925 million people are starving across the planet ,yet enough food is wast- ed to feed three billion people every year. These numbers are staggering in which society produces over a threefold amount of food to feed the starving but such food is wasted. This demonstrates the hole in the food production system that, if fixed, would feed the hungry and reduce the environmental burden. Additionally, food waste directly contributes to global warming by releasing methane. Often less considered than more well-known carbon dioxide, methane is actually eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first twenty years. Thus, with such capacity for harm, methane escalates climate change through its enhanced warming capabilities. On the scale food is wasted, this methane quickly intensifies greenhouse gas emissions as food waste accounts for around eight percent of emissions globally.