Food Waste
Over 60% of household food waste in Canada is avoidable.
This amounts to 140 kilograms of wasted food each year for the average Canadian household, at a cost of more than $1,100 per year. As a country, Canada wastes more than $17 billion worth of edible food each year!
To put that in perspective, every day in Canada we waste:
- 1.2 million tomatoes
- 470,000 heads of lettuce
- 2.4 million potatoes
- 750,000 loaves of bread
- 1.2 million apples
- 555,000 bananas
- 1 million cups of milk
- and 450,000 eggs
Environmental Cost
Wasting food means we are wasting the resources used to grow, produce and distribute that food to consumers. Transporting food from farm to table and then managing or disposing of food as waste also has a significant carbon footprint – contributing to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Composting our food scraps is certainly better than sending it to a landfill, but preventing wasted food altogether is an even better way to lessen our impact on the environment.
Food scraps in our landfills generate methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Landfilling food also creates leachate, a toxic sludge that can contaminate groundwater.
In Whitehorse, almost 20% of landfilled material is food waste!
Want to reduce food waste in your household?
Visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.ca for meal planning help, tips on keeping foods fresh, recipes, kitchen hacks and more!
