Even though most of our parents diligently drove home the virtues of clearing our plates and eating our vegetables (all of them), compostable waste such as yard trimmings and food scraps still make up 23 percent of the U.S. solid waste stream.
Meanwhile, huge plots of land and countless resources are devoted to producing the ingredients that go into our various meals and snacks. For example, we've got 255 million chickens busy providing for our nation's annual demand for eggs, and a geographic area the size of Wyoming growing our wheat. With that in mind, wasting food is about more than just wasting money—it's also about wasting all the land resources that produce it. That doesn't mean you should keep eating when you're already full. Just save the leftovers and have them later. After all, nothing is better than a cold slice of pizza in the morning.
