l.a. food banks list of donors the question is could they do more and from the amount of food thrown into dumpsters every night the answer is yes. darryn told me that the l.a. food bank is short eleven million pounds of food every year if the entire country throws out ninety six billion pounds of food every year what about just los angeles county i'm going to use this whipped cream i got out of the dumpster the other night to do the math to see how much food l.a. county throws away every year every year in l.a. county we throw away twenty four billion pounds of trash. according to the e.p.a. twelve percent of that is food waste that means we throw away two billion eight hundred and eighty million pounds of food saving just one percent of valets food waste would equal nearly thirty million pounds of food that's almost triple what the food bank is short every year. food waste happens on all levels of production and consumption on farms in transit in the making of highly produced foods in grocery stores in restaurants and in our homes but grocery stores are the obvious choice for redirecting