Food Waste and Climate Change

The reduction of food waste is getting a lot of discussion as a climate change mitigation strategy, some stories suggesting that food waste accounts for as much as 1/3 of GHG emissions. While that's an exaggeration, there is a lot of food waste. Whether reducing food waste actually reduces your carbon footprint is a tricky question, depending on what what would have happened to the food you didn't have to buy as a result, and what happens to the food you waste (for example, does it get composted and turn to CO2, or get landfilled and turn to methane (and is that methane released to the atmosphere or captured). All very situation-specific questions.  

We're organizing a few materials specific to the topic of individual action against food waste as Jump Thoughts to the left for your exploration.

You can explore the much larger topic of food waste generally through the Food Waste Reduction Index Entry attached to this thought as a Parent Thought.