Many of those discarded food scraps can be used. (Thinkstock by Getty Images) Hey, take a gander at your kitchen wastebasket and see all the money in there. Statistics come in from several directions to show how much food we regularly waste (closer-to-the-truth verbs would be “toss” or “throw out”). In 2015, the last year for which it offers these sorts of numbers, the U.S.