Eliza Barclay reports for the Salt, NPR’s food blog:

[Venkat (founder and president of of CleanMetrics, a green-focused analytics firms)] found that food waste is responsible for 135 million tons of greenhouse gases every year, or about 1.5 percent of all emissions.

So how does that break down for a family or an individual? The average family is responsible for about 1,800 pounds of emissions from food waste, while an individual contributes about 440 pounds a year, Venkat found. A typical car, meanwhile, emits about 9,000 pounds a year.

I look forward to the weekends for many reasons, perhaps the most obsessive-compulsive of which is removing that week’s leftovers from the fridge before going grocery shopping for the next week.

Each week, I throw away at least 2-3 servings of food, and I hate it. Living in an apartment prevents me from composting—after all, where would I put it? I am not sure what the solution is. I try to bring leftovers for lunch, and while I eat them most of the time, there are days when I just want a sandwich from Publix instead of a bowl of leftover rice and beans from the night before.

How do you handle your leftover food? Do you eat it, throw it out, or compost it?