Landfill Of Lettuce: Why Were These Greens Tossed Before Their Time?

Cesar Zuniga, operations manager at the Salinas Valley municipal dump in California, points to salad greens that still have two weeks before their sell-by date. "Some loads ... look very fresh," Zuniga says. "We question, wow, why is this being tossed?"

Here's a scenario lots of us can relate to: tossing a bag of lettuce because it sat too long in the back of the fridge.

It doesn't take a long time for greens to turn to slime.

Bag by bag, this waste adds up. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the typical American family throws out about $1,600 worth of food each year. And what we consumers toss out is just the last step in a long chain of waste.

Food is lost on farms, during processing and trucking. Supermarkets toss out unsold food.

We were curious about this downstream waste — the part of the food supply chain that's largely hidden from consumers.

And we wondered how the fast-growing, packaged produce and salads category — which is expected to approach $7 billion in sales by 2018 — might contribute to waste.

In the Salinas Valley of California — known as America's salad bowl — we visited the municipal dump. The fertile strip of land surrounding the town of Salinas produces an estimated 70 percent of U.S. salad greens.

Read more here.