Blog #3

Chase Rodie
123 Candyland Avenue
Reno, NV, 89511
(775) 111-1111
johndoe@gmail.com

March 27, 2019


Andrew Wheeler
Director- EPA
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters
1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW
District Of Columbia, Washington, 20004

Dear Mr. Wheeler,

I write to inform you of a huge problem that lies within our country. This problem is the food excess that we contain. Every day we line our shelves and restaurants with more food than we can consume. According to Tristram Stuart who is a leading expert in this field we produce 4 times the amount of food we can actually can consume. The extra food we do not consume ultimately gets wasted and is thrown out. This is obviously not an efficient use of our food supply. This issue stems from our strict aesthetic requirements for food. Most supermarkets only allow certain types of food that consumers will pick. We need to change this view of how we see food that is not aesthetically perfect. Because ultimately we consume food because our needs it not because of what it looks like. Consumers today think that a misshapen pear or bruised avocado effects the nutrition that we are getting from the food while it most certainly does not. Even supermarkets now are selling bread loafs without the crust. Where does that crust go? It is thrown away and wasted. I understand that there will be food waste but the food that is being wasted can go to better things such as feeding the homeless. Another issue with food waste is the effect it has on the environment. To get all this extra food we are cutting down forests, depleting water reserves, and emitting fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate. We are ruining the environment just to mass produce food that we as a nation do not even need. Tristram for evidence used raw data to show food waste. He matched up the amount of food we have been producing with what was likely being consumed. This data showed that we had double the amount of food we were consuming in supermarkets in restaurants. Then coupled with the food provided towards livestock that was nearly quadruple in excess to what we are consuming. Our ancestors set out to achieve feeding themselves by farming 12,000 years ago but unfortunately now we are mass producing food we do not need and then throwing it away and ultimately polluting the earth in process by that food going to landfills. This problem is also not isolated in the US I urge that the US distinguishes itself in the fight to end food waste by educating our people and other Western civilized nations.

Dear,


Chase Rodie