Try to plan your food purchases and meal preparations so that you minimize the amount of food thrown away. You'll save on your food bill and reduce the amount of energy wasted ... read full tip

Try to plan your food purchases and meal preparations so that you minimize the amount of food thrown away. You'll save on your food bill and reduce the amount of energy wasted as well. In general, the total energy consumed in all the steps of producing a meal (from the farm to the table) is 10-15 times greater than the energy contained within the food itself.

According to survey research, the average U.S. household discards more than 460 pounds of food every year, costing roughly $590. An estimated 65 pounds of this is packaged food that could have been donated to a food bank.

Across the country, some 52 billion pounds-approximately 5-10 percent-of food purchased at the grocery store is disposed of annually by U.S. households. This wasted food required more than 1,500 trillion BTU of energy to produce and reflects monetary losses of more than $65 billion-enough to provide $2,000 worth of food to each person in the U.S. living below the poverty line.

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U.S. Census Data