As I’ve often mentioned, cheap food is a major cause for food waste. For the past few years it has hovered at about 10 percent of household spending.
But, at a recent brown bag lunch, Portland food and waste thinkers informed me that the cost had dipped even further. It’s now 6.9 percent! That’s based on a Nielson report using USDA data.
That cheapness has a real impact–we don’t tend to value that which is inexpensive. And by most any definition, something that’s 7 percent of our budget is cheap. And each individual item is only a fraction of that percentage, providing little economic incentive not to waste.
And so…waste we do!
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