We throw out almost as much as we eat, wasting 40 percent of our food and $165 billion every year, John Oliver said on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday.
“When we dump food into a landfill, we’re essentially throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and Dutch-ovening the entire planet.”
That’s enough to fill 730 football stadiums.
“Food waste is like the band Rascall Flatts,” Oliver said. “It can fill a surprising number of stadiums even though most people consider it complete garbage.”
We waste so much food that Oliver said, “in 40 years, when your order pizza from Domino’s, they’ll just deliver it straight to the nearest dumpster — as they should, but that’s not the point here.”
All that wasted food doesn’t go into stadiums, of course. It goes into dumps — where, as it decays, it pumps out methane gas, a greenhouse gas that’s 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.
“When we dump food into a landfill, we’re essentially throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and Dutch-ovening the entire planet,” Oliver said.
As Oliver points out, that food could’ve been used to feed the hungry instead of going into the trash.
“If you’re thinking, ‘But hold on, John, what if I’m an asshole who couldn’t give a shit about America’s hungry families or the long-term viability of life on earth?’ Well, first let me say, ‘Mr. Trump, thank you so much for taking the time to watch this show tonight. It’s lovely to have you with us.'”
But he also found a “selfish financial reason” to worry about food waste — namely, the money wasted on groceries that never get eaten.
So what’s the solution? Oliver has some ideas in the clip below.
