I believe that food waste is a huge issue, as 40% of food never makes it from the farm to the table. This is a real problem, but something often overlooked is the impact of restaurants on our environment. Restaurant waste enormous amounts of food, whether it be leftovers from someone's meal or food deemed not "worthy" of being eaten at the establishment. Restaurants also pollute the environment by using non-reusable plastics. Some examples are plastic or Styrofoam takeout boxes in plastic non-reusable bags, plastic cups, plastic silverware, plastic straws, and in some cases plastic plates or bowls. In order to cut down on plastics that are harming our ecosystems, we need to encourage our local restaurants to stop using plastic bags and takeout boxes and start using cardboard, to use paper straws, metal silverware and reusable plates, bowls, and cups. This could make a major change in your local environment, and hopefully prevent more plastics from entering the oceans and ecosystems.

Thank you for the advice and interesting statics. Food made up a surprisingly large part of my carbon footprint. To lower the food aspect of carbon footprint, I recommend also eating more vegetarian meals instead of meat and snacks. Urging businesses to use more environment friendly utensils and bowls is a great solution to this problem, as in the Bay Area, people have successfully convinced businesses to switch to environment friendly equipment via petitions and Yelp reviews. One pizza restaurant in my area added compost and recycling bins after we complained about the fact they only had trash bins and non-environment friendly utensils, napkins, and plates. It is possible to convince businesses to change.

[Le limona](//muut.com/u/footprint/s1/:footprint:YDZK:lelimona.png.jpg)