Next time you throw out a half-eaten pork chop, keep in mind that youre wasting a lot more than a dead pig.

Meat waste is worse for the environment than vegetable or grain waste because animal-based foods typically require more energy and emit more greenhouse gases, experts say . And in the United States, we waste a lot of meat.

According to a recent report from the Department of Agriculture, 13.4 billion pounds of meat and poultry were lost at the retail and consumer level in 2010. Consumers were responsible for more than 11.1 billion pounds of that waste.

When looking at these striking numbers, we tend to forget that the hidden resources used to raise the animals go to waste as well the fuel, fertilizer, land, feed and water.