THE PROBLEM

Everyone loves food. Beyond sustaining our ability to live, food brings people joy, comfort, and fulfillment, which is why it is always in such high demand. But is there ever a point where purchasing food can become excessive, unnecessary, and even wasteful? Yes!

Food waste is a growing global crisis that is not only unnecessarily increasing consumer expenses, but also negatively affecting the environment, hurting the economy, and causing a lot of needless hunger. Food waste, defined by the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS), is any food discarded by retailers due to color or appearance and plate waste by consumers that includes the half-eaten meal left on your plate at a restaurant, unused food scraps from preparing a meal at home, and the spoiled milk a family pours down the driven.

Nowadays, especially in more developed and industrialized countries where excessive spending on groceries, restaurant food, and take-out is normalized, a significant amount of food is wasted simply because people tend to purchase more than they can consume. The increased availability of grocery store chains, restaurants, and delivery services, such as Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, and UberEats, has provided more people with access to food but has also resulted in increased levels of food waste due to excessive spending.

Needless to say, food waste has severe environmental and economic consequences, which is why people should find more environmentally and financially sustainable ways of reducing food waste.

RELEVANCY

This is a problem that is especially relevant to the current global COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses close and people's needs shift, farmers are left with more food than they can sell, resulting in a drastic increase in food waste, while more people than ever are struggling with food insecurity due to financial challenges in a failing economy. Under normal circumstances, restaurants, universities, grocery stores, stadiums, and other key players in the food service industry are farmers' main buyers, but strict social distancing mandates have forced many of these places to scale or shut-down their operations, which has put a huge strain on farmers and food producers. Without these big buyers, more food is going to waste.

WHERE IS FOOD WASTED?

Retail Businesses:

In 2010, aproximately 43 billion lbs of food were wasted in US retail stores, which is particularly concerning given that in 2016, 12.3% of American households struggled with food insecurity. Most of the loss in retail operations is in persishables, including baked goods, produce, meat, seafood, and prepared meals. Fruits and vegetables that are unsold cost supermarkets $15 billion annually, according to the USDA. Unfortunately, wasteful practices in the retail industry are often considered smart business strategies. Some of the main reasons for food waste in retail stores include: overstocked product displays, expectation of cosmetic perfection of fruits and vegetables, oversized packages, the availability of

prepared food until closing, expired "sell by" dates, damaged goods, out-

dated seasonal items, over purchasing of unpopular foods, and under staffing.

Restaurants and Institutions:

US restaurants generate an estimated 22 to 33 billion lbs of food waste each year. US Institutions, including schools, hote,s and hospitals, generate an additional 7 to 11 billion lbs per year. Approximately 4 to 10% of the food purchased by restaurants is wasted before even reaching the consumer primarily due to oversized portions, inflexibility of chain store management, and extensive menu choices. According to the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, diners, on average, leave 17% of their meals uneaten and 55% of edible leftovers are left at the restaurant. This is partly due to the fact that portion sizes have increased significantly over the past 30 years, often being two to eight times larger than USDA or Federal Drug Administration (FDA) standard servings.

Kitchen culture and staff behavior such as over-preparation of food, improperin gredient storage, and failure to use food scraps and trimmings can also contribute to food waste. All-you-can-eat buffets are especially wasteful, since extra food cannot legally be reused or donated due to health code restrictions. In addition, the common practice of keeping buffets fully stocked during business hours (Rather than allowing items to run out near closing) creates even more unnecessary food waste.

Households:

Although retail businesses, restaurants, and institutions generate a significant amount of food waste, the largest contributing factor of food waste in the US is households. US households waste approximately 76 billion lbs of food per year. Approximately 40 to 50% of food waste, including 51 to 63% of seafood waste, happens at the consumer level. In the US, an average person wastes 238 lbs of food per year (21% of the food they buy), costing them about $1,800 per year. In terms of total mass, fresh fruits and vegetables account for the largest losses at the consumer level (19% of fruits and 22% of vegetables), followed by dairy (20%), meat (21%), and seafood (31%). The main contributors to household food waste in the U.S. include: food spoilage, over-preparing of food, date label confusion of the "sell by," "best if used by, and "expires by" dates, overbuying, and poor planning before grocery shopping and/or restaurant trips.

FACTS: HOW MUCH FOOD IS WASTED?

Just how much food do Americans waste? Here’s some “food” for thought: The United States is the global leader in food waste, with Americans discarding nearly 40 million tons of food every year. That’s 80 billion pounds of food and equates to more than $161 billion, approximately 219 pounds of waste per person, and 30-40 % of the US food supply.

WHY IS SO MUCH FOOD WASTED?

With 37 million people across the US including 11 million children suffering from food insecurity, why do Americans waste so much food?

Food spoilage, whether real or perceived, is one of the biggest reasons people throw out food. More than 80 % of Americans discard perfectly good, consumable food simply because they misunderstand expiration labels.

Labels like “sell by”, “use by”, “expires on”, “best before” or “best by” are confusing to people — and in an effort to not risk the potential of a food-borne illness, they’ll just toss it in the garbage.

The consumerist culture prevalent in most developed countries puts far too much emphasis on the importance of having material goods to attain a comfortable lifestyle in a capitalist society, which has encouraged overspending and resulted in an egregious amount of food waste that not only negatively impacts the consumer's wallet, but more importantly hurts the state of our environment and economy.

Compared to the rest of the world, food in the United States is plentiful and less costly, and often this contributes to a general sentiment of not appreciating or valuing it the way other cultures around the world do.

Americans are also often impulsive in their food purchases, unrealistically assessing how much food is required, and as a result, purchasing way more food than they need or buying food they won’t actually eat. This type of purchasing behavior results in unnecessary food waste.

Most people also don't use food in its entirety the way our ancestors used to. We tend to underutilize leftovers and toss food scraps that can still be consumed or composted.

Composting isn’t part of most people's food-prep routine, so we continue to exacerbate the severity of the global food waste problem and the sheer size of US landfills.

The figure to the right illustrates the amount of food waste produced by different countries per year and clearly indicates that the US is the global leader in food waste.

US VS. REST OF THE WORLD

In developing countries, the majority of food waste occurs during post-harvest and processing, due to problems, such as inadequate storage and refrigeration. On the other hand, industrialized countries — like those in North America, Europe, and industrialized Asia — almost half of all their food waste occur in grocery stores, restaurants, and households.

In Europe and North America, per capita waste by consumers is around 209-253 lbs. (95-115 kg) each year. That averages to over ½ lb. of food wasted per person, per day.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

While the food waste movement across America is gaining momentum, it needs to pick up speed to help tackle one of the globe’s most pressing problems: climate change. There is an enormous environmental cost when it comes to producing food, yet the environmental impact of approximately 40% of the food produced in the US has no meaning because all of that food is wasted every year.

About 3.5 billion acres of land across the entire world that is used to produce food that is ultimately wasted. That's more land than the entire country of China and almost 30% of the planet's total agricultural land.

Wasting food has wastes the water and energy it took to produce it. Food waste uses more water than any country in the world. In order to produce all the food that ultimately is wasted, we use over 66 trillion gallons of water every year, which also happens to be the amount of water that flows through the 2,300 mile Volga River in Russia.

Food waste also generates harmful greenhouse gases — 8% of the world’s emissions — like methane, carbon dioxide, and chlorofluorocarbons, which contribute to global warming.

Food that sits decaying in landfills also produces nitrogen pollution, which causes algae blooms and dead zones.

According to the World Wildlife Federation, the production of wasted food in the United States is equivalent to the greenhouse emissions of 37 million cars.

If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, after China and the U.S. These environmental impacts will likely lead to irreversible damage to our planet if we continue on the same path of food waste.

The figure to the right illustrates these environmental facts.

Only 5% of food is composed in the US and as a result, uneaten food is the single largest component of municipal solid waste. In landfills, food gradually breaks down to form methane, a greenhouse gas that is up to 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. According to a report from the UK based organization WRAP, if food were removed from UK landfills, the subsequent reduction in greenhouse gases would be equivalent to removing one-fifth of all the cars in the UK from the road.

Consumer food waste also has serious implications for energy usage. A study by the consulting group McKinsey found that, on average, household food losses are responsible for eight times the energy waste of farm-level food losses due to the energy used along the food supply chain and in preparation.

In addition, food waste is responsible for more than 25% of all the freshwater consumption in the US each year and is among the leading causes of freshwater pollution. Given all the resources needed for food production, it is worth our while to make sure that the food we produce is not wasted, if not for the sake of the hard-working workers who tirelessly grow the food only for so much of it to be wasted, then for the well-being of our planet.

FINANCIAL IMPACTS

If reducing food insecurity and saving the planet aren’t enough to inspire action to reduce food waste, perhaps one more good reason will: money. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Americans waste more than $161 billion each year on food, with dairy products being the food item we toss out the most. The average American family of four throws out $1,600 a year in produce. Multiply that by the typical 18 years that a child lives at home and you could easily pay for a year’s worth of tuition at any number of America’s private colleges or universities.

CHANGING LAWS

The good news is that several states across the country are taking action to curb food waste and gain food recovery. Legislators in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont have passed laws that restrict the amount of food waste going to landfills, with Vermont establishing a Universal Recycling Law that bans food scrap waste altogether by the end of this year.

There is pending legislation in California, Colorado and Massachusetts that would establish programs to fund private-sector composting and organic collection programs. In addition, several states like Tennessee and Washington, and cities like Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsin, have created food waste task forces to reduce waste, creating composting education and infrastructure and eliminating food waste from US landfills.

Last year, the New York City Department of Sanitation expanded upon their organics separation rules, proposing that even more food-related businesses would be required to separate organic waste in an effort to keep nearly 100,000 tons of wasted food out of landfills each year.

The city and state efforts are trickling into US school systems too — both Maine and Rhode Island have introduced legislation to reduce the amount of food waste in schools. On a national level, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set a goal in 2015 to reduce food waste by half by 2030.

BEANS, CANNED, OR COOKED