After I graduated high school, I worked in a deli in a grocery store. Then I was a server at IHOP, and now I currently work in a dining hall. The amount of food that gets thrown out at the end of the night at the dining hall is atrocious. In a study done by scientists, Dongjin Lee, Jisu Bae, Jungu Kang, and Kiheon Kim, they “concluded that Korean food wastes and food waste leachate have a sufficient potential of methane yield in the ongoing biogasification facilities.” This means that methane levels are rising due to food waste, affecting our climate in a negative way.

There are some tactics that I have seen at the dining hall first hand that could help reduce food waste. One way would be to take less initially. There are also ways to reduce food waste in your own home, like storing food correctly, saving leftovers, and eating the skin. Some foods that never need to be refrigerated are “potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, cucumbers and onions.” Another big problem with food storage is storing food with ethylene gas near foods that do not. Foods that produce ethylene gas include bananas, avocados, tomatoes, cantaloupes, peaches, and pears. Saving leftovers is essential to reducing food waste. The skin of foods is where most of the nutrients are stored. Not only will people’s health benefit from eating the skin, but food waste can also be avoided if people were less picky about what they ate, and ate the skins.