While most energy-saving measures involve spending up-front (insulation) or doing without (turning thermostat down), there's one way to save energy that's cost-free and relatively painless - stop throwing away so much food.
A pair of scientists at the University of Texas at Austin estimate that Americans waste the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil a year - or about 2 percent of the nation's annual energy needs - by discarding uneaten food or letting it spoil.
Michael Webber and Amanda Cuellar of UT's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy figure it takes up to 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce, package, prepare preserve and distribute a year's worth of food consumed in the United States. Somewhere between 8 and 16 percent of the energy consumed in this country went into food production, it's estimated.
But the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that about 27 percent of that food gets wasted, or thrown away. Webber and Cuellar note that their estimates of food waste are conservative because the information they relied upon is incomplete and outdated. Besides saving energy, cutting down on food waste might save us a little money, too.
According to their study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, these are the most wasted food categories, by percent: