The average American's annual food waste, water use, energy consumption, garbage, and carbon emissions in 1 simple chart

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April 22, 2018 2:21 PM

In honor of Earth Day on April 22, we collected data on what the average American uses, wastes, and emits each year.

The United States comprises about 5% of the world's population.
However, Americans consume an far more than that share of the world's food,
In honor of

America's thirst for resources seems unquenchable, and its ability to generate waste can be shocking.

In 2015, for example, 5% of the world's population lived in the United States, but the country consumed about 18% of the planet's energy, according to EIA data.

Meanwhile, Americans in 2010 had a 430-billion-pound bounty of food, yet wasted about 31% of it. That's roughly 141 trillion calories' worth of grub, according to USDA statistics.

In honor of Earth Day on Sunday, April 22, Business Insider crunched these and other numbers to create a full picture of what the average American uses, wastes, and emits each year. Take a look:

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