Food is one of the most important things in any cultural landscape: whether it's bonding over meals, celebrating a life event, passing recipes across generations, or trying something new, food gives us life (quite literally). There's enough food to go around for the billions of people that inhabit this planet, but in reality, on some ends of the world, millions face food insecurity and go hungry. And on other ends, countries that have surplus also have tons of food waste
A global food system with complicated transportation and storage facilities leads to millions of tons of food thrown away every year. The U.S. alone wastes around 40% of our food, totaling up to 160 billion pounds waste each year.
People toss out food on a regular basis, whether it's from forgetting to eat leftovers, overproduction, spoilage, or not knowing how to compost trash. Food waste not only refers to the food we toss out, but also the resources required to grow the food and the process in which it is thrown away. This all adds up to an enormous waste of money, food insecurity, and environmental harm.
How are we tossing out all of this food and what can we do to help limit food waste?
At a Glance
Food is wasted in two different ways — food loss and food waste.
Food loss refers to food that goes uneaten at any stage of the food supply process. This includes leftover crops, spoiled food during transportation, and uneaten food at home or restaurants.
Food waste refers to food thrown away either due to their color, appearance, or wasted by consumers.
About 43% of the food wasted in America happens at the household level. The average American throws away about a pound of food a day — food waste advocacy group ReFED estimates this to be worth about $408 billion, not including $218 billion lost from natural resources like water, gas, and energy used to create this food.
With all of this wasted food, we could feed over 690 million people that are malnourished every day. Many “developed” countries like the U.S. lead the world in food waste, leaving it up to many U.S. consumers to make big changes in our consumption and waste management.
Environmental Cost
You might believe that food is biodegradable — after all, what’s the harm in throwing out something that will decompose in the ground? The biggest issue lies in the large-scale and non-sustainable process.
Food is often thrown into landfills and incinerators, with food waste representing 22% of waste each year. 56% of this waste goes to the landfill (63.1 million tons), 12% is combusted, and only 4% is actually being composted. Food thrown into the landfill is not the same as being composted: organic waste produces and makes up 8.2% of the world’s methane emissions, the greenhouse gas that is 84x more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
Food waste also implies a huge damage to freshwater and energy. Assessment studies found that food waste takes up 25% of our freshwater, 19% of our fertilizer, and 18% of our cropland. It also takes up around 300 million barrels of oil each year.
Overall, the carbon footprint is absolutely massive, with the global food system responsible for a third of all human-created greenhouse gas emissions.
Human Cost
Food insecurity and malnourishment are huge global issues, with 1 in 4 people around the world are moderately or severely food insecure. 45% of all deaths in children under 5 are due to malnourishment. When we think of hunger, it's easy to imagine people in third world countries starving, but we neighbors and people in our community who worry about feeding themselves and their families. In 2019, around 10.5% of Americans were food insecure, or had insufficient money or resources to acquire enough food for all households.
So much of the food that is produced is unable to fulfill its purpose of feeding someone, and once allocated, it's difficult to distribute to people who need it.
Where Does Food Waste Happen
Food waste happens across the entire food chain, so we’ll touch on a few key areas: harvesting, processing and transportation, supermarkets and restaurants, and our households.
Harvesting
Although in the U.S. agriculture consumes 80% of freshwater, 50% of land and 15.7% of the energy budget, over 20 billion pounds of produce is also lost on farms each year. At the same time, 8% of the fish caught in fisheries are also tossed out, totaling to over 78.3 million tons lost per year. This could be due to a few key reasons:
Farmers often plant more than consumers demand.This could lead to large portions of food being unable to harvest due to the weather, pests, or disease.
Economics of food prices could lead to farmers leaving their crops unharvested, as costs of transportation and labor are more than they could earn. This happened a lot during COVID-19, leading to over 3.7 million gallons of milk wasted.
“Ugly produce” is also tossed out as consumers don’t want to purchase these misshapen items, despite being completely edible.
Food safety and poor harvesting processes also lead to farmers having to toss out food. This is especially true for fisheries, as most fish discarded are dead or dying. This could potentially disrupt an ocean’s ecosystem as there will be more scraps for scavengers.
Processing and Distribution
After food is harvested, they are processed and distributed at packing houses or manufacturing facilities. This food is then distributed and transported to all around the world. To keep an efficient and tight process, retailers have strict standards and guidelines, causing lots of potential food waste from skins, fats, peels, etc.
While 33% of this can be reused and recovered, over two billion pounds are still wasted during this stage. Labor shortages, overproduction, product damages, and poor processes are the main issues. This was especially true during COVID-19, as meat facilities closed, forcing the slaughtering of animals by the thousands.
During distribution, a lack of reliable refrigeration, adequate infrastructure, and slow transportation can lead to perished food. Buyers at supermarkets often reject 2-5% of perishable food due to spoilage during transportation. These sometimes get donated to food rescue nonprofits, but they are often in large quantities that spoil anyway.
Supermarkets and Restaurants
Most of the loss found in retail stores and restaurants come in the form of perishables and uneaten food. Over 43 billion pounds were wasted in supermarkets in 2010, and around 33 billion pounds are wasted each year in restaurants.
For supermarkets, wasted food isn’t considered a bad thing and is often seen as a good business strategy — overstock displays, oversized packages, over prepared food, outdated seasonal items, and poor labor standards all lead to food waste. Only 10% of this food is recovered and donated, restricted by liability concerns, distribution processes, and funding.
For restaurants, food waste follows very similar lines due to overpreparation, poor storage, and inflexible menus. Diners often leave 17% of their food uneaten, as portion sizes have actually grown quite significantly, with sizings up to 2-8x larger than USDA regulations. You can probably imagine that buffets are incredibly wasteful and can’t be donated due to health code restrictions.
Households
Americans waste the most food at their own home — over 76 billion pounds of food per year. On average, each person throws away 238 pounds of food per year, costing at least $1800, with fruits and vegetables accounting for 41% of this waste.
Around ⅔ of wasted food is due to food spoilage, which comes from improper storage, poor planning, partially used ingredients, or over purchasing. The remaining third is due to overpreparation. Large serving sizes lead to leftovers, which end up with people throwing them away anyways.
People are also often confused with expiration dates, with 80% of Americans often prematurely tossing out food. “Sell by” and “use by” dates are not federally regulated, and actually serve as suggestions for higher quality. Some studies have shown that if there were more standardization to food labeling, it could reduce household food waste by 20%.
The Future of Food Waste
As awareness and food studies continue to grow, food waste will hopefully continue to trend downwards. With the efforts of more than 3,300 articles the past few years, educating households continues to be the first way to help educate the public and support people with resources to help them implement food saving. Quantifiable studies with actionable benchmarks also help the USDA, businesses, and people know how progress can be measured.
For households, many small startups are trying to educate and teach people ways to easily compost their food waste. Projects like Lomi, Tero, and Kalea try to make food recycling super easy. Bag and container products like Vejibag, Freshworks, and Bee’s Wrap try to help find storage solutions for vegetables and fruits.
Other companies are trying to take care of food waste at other steps of the process. Imperfect Foods and Uglies Snacks are trying to deliver “ugly produce” to consumers that don’t mind. The 2050 Company, Rise Products, Pulp Pantry, Rubies in the Rubble and Upprinting Food make food from leftover food products.
On the food donation front, some organizations are trying to establish processes to donate surplus foods to underserved communities such as Re-plate, Olio, Too Good To Go, Ripe Revival Market, Feeding America. Food recovery programs like the Food Recovery Network or Sustainable America also try to help donate. Government programs such as food banks try to help support people who need food, with policies such as SNAP and the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. But a lack of enforcement, adequate funding and healthy nutritious food can lead to difficulty getting food to people who need it.
Policy to standardize expiration date practices are also still in works, but will take some time if they will ever be approved. Other policies are set in place to get federal tax incentives to businesses for donating food, provide resources for reducing food loss during agriculture, and reduce food waste in schools.
What You Can Do
The biggest ways to reduce food waste comes from everyday people, just like you. Here are a few ways you can help out:
Make donations of 💸 money or 🥦 food to nonprofits or organizations that try to help distribute food to people in need.
Volunteer 🕒 time to work with food vendors or redistribution systems to help give out food.
Try to plan meals and 🛒 go grocery shopping in advance so you can begin to have a zero-waste kitchen. Properly store food at home as soon as you can.
Learn how you can 🥕 compost at home or participate in composting with your city. Local organizations or farms might also have drop offs for composting. Support businesses that help donate food before tossing it to your landfill.
Participate and ✏️ educate others about food waste — Stop Food Waste Day falls on someday in April every year, so you can use it as a great excuse to teach people.
Share this 🌶️ article with them! We’d love to spread the word on how they can do better.
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