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Before you throw that rotten apple into your garbage can, think about this…decaying food in landfills is emitting more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere than most countries.

A new report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization called “The Food Wastage Footprint” finds that one third of our world’s food ends up in the landfill creating close to 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases. Decaying food generates methane which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

While 870 million people go hungry every day, 1.3 billion tons of food is lost at either the production or consumer level. While wealthier nations toss their food at the consumer level, poorer countries are losing more food at the production end.

GUEST: Danielle Nierenberg is Co-Founder of Food Tank: The Food Think Tank. She has written several books and articles for The Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today

Visit www.foodtank.org for more information.