looking back on the last time you had a meal with a group of people, how many of the others actually finished everything on their plate, or how many times do you go to clear your plate in the dinning hall and see other plates there filled with uneaten food, maybe you wonder what happens with the uneaten food at eating establishments, the answer is they get put in a dumpster, 30-40% of food in America goes to waste, so that would be like filling a plate with food and just throwing away a large portion of it every time you ate. While all this food is going to waste there are 48.1 million households in the United States that are food insecure, which means that those household do not know where their next meal is coming from, now this is not an unsolvable thing, by reducing the food wastage by only 15 percent would be enough to feed 25 million Americans. Not only is this a burden on those who are less fortunate but also on those who have food but also on those who handle it and every involvement in between, 218 billion dollars a year is put into food that is ultimately put to waste, that is 52 tons of food put into a landfill every year, and an additional 10 tons that is discarded or left unharvested at farms, this all starts with being responsible, the majority of the waste coming from households, with approximately 144 billion dollars worth of food going to waste from houses alone. There are small simple things that can be done to reduce the waste in your household, and that begins with being realistic with what you'll eat and what you won't when you go shopping at the grocery store, recognize food you don't regularly finish or even eat at all and be responsible when shopping.

http://www.refed.com/?sort=economic-value-per-ton

https://www.epa.gov/recycle/reducing-wasted-food-home