World Food Day is an important time to recognize the pressing need to end world hunger and food insecurity. While this day has a global focus, the issues of hunger and food insecurity are also close to home. More than one in seven American households (14.3 percent) are food insecure, meaning that these households lacked access to enough food for building healthy eating habits and lifestyles for all members of that household.

One important step toward reducing hunger and food insecurity is to waste less food. Reducing food waste not only has large humanitarian implications but also reduces your carbon footprint by decreasing the processing, transport, and storage involved in food production. Additionally, reducing food waste has financial implications. More than 20 pounds of food is wasted per person, per month, in the U.S.

Americans are taking steps to reduce food waste. Results from the International Food Information Council Foundation’s 2016 Food and Health Survey indicate that Americans are being more strategic about leftovers by either taking them home from restaurants (58 percent), using leftovers from cooking (53 percent), or using or freezing leftovers in a timely manner (47 percent). Additionally, more than one in two Americans are all about the meal prep by planning their meals (51 percent) and making shopping lists (51 percent).

To learn more about strategies to reduce food waste, check out our latest article on Huffington Post.