I recently read an article on the Smithsonian website which really caught my interest. It was called This Is How Much Water You Waste When You Throw Away Food. Food wastage has always been a world wide problem. But now we have a whole new problem. I learned that wasting food is basically like pouring gallons and gallons of freshwater down a drain. Sounds pretty crazy right? But it’s true.
When a banana is squishy with a few black spots on it or an apple looks rotten most people would throw their food in the trash without a second thought. But it’s that second thought that will save our water and our food. It’s extremely important to know how many capitol resources (tools, equipment, buildings, machinery, etc.) , natural resources (minerals, forests, water, land, etc.), and effort it takes to produce any type of food.
So How Much Water Does it Take to Produce Our Food?
When a farmer grows an apple he would use about 17.5 gallons or 70 liters of water! Growing three apples would use up enough water to over fill a 50 gallon bath tub! The majority of the water footprint for fruits is just from when a farmer waters the plant. If you think that this is a lot think about how much water it takes to produce a watermelon. One-Hundred gallons of water which is equivalent to 2 full 50 gallon bathtubs!
When it comes to meat, water is used for the animal to drink, to grow the food that the animal eats, and to maintain that animals farm plot and that’s a lot of water. So naturally fruits and vegetables have a smaller water footprint (consume less water) than meat does. A cow obviously consumes more water than a chicken so the bigger the animal the larger the water footprint is. It takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef whereas it takes 519 gallons to produce one pound of chicken.
Trader Joes actually took a step towards making a change by opening up a store in Boston that sells aging food and really cheap meals for people who can’t afford it. That store is a non-profit organization. The goods inside the store come from the local grocery stores around it to try to decrease and possibly even eliminate a large chunk of Bostons’ food waste.
An average american wastes 11 pounds of beef per year = 19800 gallons of water, 77 tomatoes = 498 gallons of water, and so much more! So think twice before you throw away your food.
