The carbon footprint of US food waste is bigger than the airline industry’s (source), and more than a third of that food waste is produced in our homes. We are poor inventory managers when we do groceries in bulk: we ambitiously buy ingredients that we don’t cook, fruits start to mold by mid-week, forgotten purchases zombie in the freezer for a... See more

This creative accounting suggests that wasting less food would somehow undo all of the harms of food production. But the nutrient cycle does not care whether or not you clean your plate. All the environmental impacts that brought that meal into being are done deals; in the parlance of introductory economics, they are “sunk costs.” In focusing so... See more