Food waste in the United States is not a lifestyle quirk. It is a systems issue.

Grounded numbers from USDA and EPA:

• About 30 to 40 percent of the US food supply is never eaten

• That equals roughly 60 to 63 million tons of food per year

• About 325 pounds per person per year, nearly a pound per day

Land footprint:

Food grown and never eaten in the US uses roughly 80 to 90 million acres of farmland.

For scale:

Oregon total land area is about 61.6 million acres.

🔶️US wasted-food farmland equals about 1.3 to 1.5 entire Oregons worth of land producing zero nutrition return.🔶️

Water footprint:

Wasted US food represents water roughly equal to the annual use of about 50 million homes.

Energy footprint:

The energy tied to wasted food, including fuel, fertilizer production, processing, refrigeration, and transport, is enough to power about 50 million homes for a year.

This is not abstract. This is land, water, fuel, and labor used to produce food that never feeds anyone.

What can we actually do in Grants Pass?

Plan meals.

Buy what you will use.

Store produce properly.

Keep scraps out of landfill.

When food scraps go to landfill, they produce methane. When they go to compost, nutrients return to soil and local farms.

Individual households feel small.

Neighborhood-level participation becomes infrastructure.

Local compost options and drop sites in the comments.

Food Waste Is an Infrastructure Problem