America, home of the waste?

Like it says in Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism, "the United States became the most wastefull society on the planet." This statement is very true for many reasons. One being, that studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that Americans waste about one fourth of all their food. Having said that, it takes 1.4 billion barrels of oil to grow, harvest, preserve, package and transport the United States' annual food supply which means about 350 million barrels of oil go to waste every year just in the United States alone. How can we help put our resources to more efficient use? Small things such as using reusable cups for coffee etc. rather than paper cups or using silver ware instead of plastic forks will help. In 2008, a man went looking for food in dumpsters to donate to the homeless shelter for thanksgiving and found about $2,000 dollars of perfectly good food. It's surprising how small things like throwing out food can hurt our planet so dramatically.