If after Thanksgiving, your fridge looks as packed as your jeans feel, consider bringing those leftovers to a shelter, an elderly neighbor, your local f

Throwing away food is money in the garbage.

ire station. If you think eating too much makes you sick, wait until you hear these statistics on food waste.

About 40 percent of edible food in the United States is thrown away.

The average person – PERSON, not household – throws away between $24 and $43 of food each month.

That’s about 20 pounds of food in the garbage.

If we wasted 15 percent less food we could feed 25 million hungry Americans.

Nearly all of food waste ends up in landfills, where it produces the heat trapping greenhouse gas called methane that’s 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Some 25 percent of the fresh water in the US is used to produce food that’s thrown away, as is 4 percent of total U.S. oil consumption.

It costs $750 million a year to dispose of wasted food.

About 2/3 of food waste is from households that don’t consume the food in time.

Americans throw out 40 percent of their fresh fish, 23 percent of their eggs and 20 percent of their milk.

Citrus fruits and cherries are the most wasted fruits.

source: usa.gov