[jon6]

165 billion divided by the population (311 million) divided by 365 days is about $1.45.

    irb(main):007:0> 165e9 / 311e6 / 365.0
    => 1.45355239395675

Which thankfully also is consistent with the other number mentioned in the article, $2275 for a family of 4 per year.

    irb(main):005:0> 2275.0 / 4 / 365
    => 1.55821917808219

Doesn't seem like a lot can be done about such a small amount of waste per day..

[konstruktor]

How is 1.5 USD per day "a small amount of waste"? In a month, that's about 90 USD for a two person household, which buys you a shopping cart full of food. Please mind that your number is an average, not a median. I would assume that poorer households, for whom food is a much larger percentage of their spending, cannot afford to waste much, and thus more affluent people actually waste much more, giving them a bigger potential of cutting waste.

[ollysb]

I'm a little bit dumbfounded at this, that's $1.45 per day, per person in a family. Do you really consider this an insignificant sum? I'm pretty comfortable these days but there have been times in my life where that represented half my food budget for the week(student days in England).

It makes me curious about food habbits. In America, if you have food remaining at the end of the meal do you automatically throw it straight in the bin or would you keep the leftovers to use for lunch or whatever the next day?

[ashleyblackmore]

I would imagine, like everywhere else in the world, it varies between people and houses.

[cmelbye]

We don't automatically throw it away. It depends on the food. Is it something that would keep well, or would it be better to just throw it away? Sometimes, food kept in the fridge is neglected or forgotten about and just ends up being thrown away a few days later.

[sgift]

Your weekly food budget was 3$? Call me curious: What did you eat with this budget? (Even it is a bit more, but still less than 10$ I am curious).

[ollysb]

OK, the day/week distinction could have been clearer, $1.45 per day = $10.15 per week = half of my weekly food budget, which was about $20. What did I eat, well, lots of jacket potatos and pasta :)

[ars]

I suspect a HUGE amount of the waste is industrial - events, parties, weddings, restaurants, things like that.

It's the same with virtually all resource usage in this country (water, energy, etc) industry uses so much compared to the average house that it's pointless to even try to conserve at home.

On a positive note it means if you actually want to conserve it's easier: There are far fewer targets to work with, and they are strongly motivated once you get them past short term thinking.

[Shivetya]

It is never pointless to conserve. If anything it benefits you.

As for businesses, giving away expired or unused food has liability and tax concerns. The liability is probably the primary reason for not doing so. Having worked in a bakery over twenty years ago they used to give expired bread to a local charity until they were blocked by county health officials. Mind you, nothing was wrong with the bread, it was merely too old for them to sell.

Then you top it off with the fact many charities want money, not old food - even canned food that is not expired is not wanted except by select charities or at certain times of the year.

[bambax]

$1.45 per person x day is not a "small" amount; for a family of four it's $174 per month: twice or thrice the price of a typical Internet subscription which everyone finds expensive...

But of course what the article doesn't say is where this waste happens: in the home or in food-processing plants, or as unsold inventory in supermarkets, etc.

[batista]

Even 500 dollars a year ($1.45 for one person) income puts you in the "top 80%" of the world, which means there's a billion people that make LESS than that.

$1,000 a year puts you in the 50% of the world per income.

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

(It seemed too small to me too, until I visited places were people earn $1 a day, like Cambodia -- that is, less than $500 per year).