It seems a bummer that stewarding our resources is surrounded by so many buzzwords. “Sustainability” and “Zero Waste” feel worn-out and meaningless after having seen them plastered across countless Instagram infographics. The phrase “food waste” could follow a similar trajectory. More often than not, being told to not waste food does nothing more than make you feel guilty for tossing out those moldy leftovers you forgot in the back of the fridge. But with food prices having bloated dramatically over the past few years, it is worth saving “food waste” from becoming just another buzzword.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States wastes 35% of its food supply each year, which comes out to between 161 and 335 billion pounds of food. The agency states that the nation’s food waste accounts for a loss of energy that would be “enough to power more than 50 million U.S. homes for a year.”
These numbers might be disappointing, but they’re not shocking. In my experience, most people are aware that food waste is an issue. They’ve heard about how excessive quantities of food end up in landfills, but they also realize that finishing a helping of food that was a little too big isn’t a logical solution. After all, in the moments when we most often confront food waste, the food has already been produced, has spoiled or has no potential to be realistically redistributed to another person who needs it. We are left feeling useless, and as a consequence, the fight against “food waste” loses its meaning.
It is reasonable to feel this way. The food system in the U.S. wastes a great deal of food before it ever reaches the consumer. Food waste does not only refer to the food scraped into the trash at the end of a meal, but also encompasses all of the losses that take place before food makes it to the table. Each stage of the process—including production, storage, processing, transport and distribution—sees food lost to fates such as spoilage, damage and failure to meet consumer preferences.
For instance, farmers often decide crops are better left in the field in the face of rapidly changing crop prices, labor shortages and strict aesthetic standards demanded by buyers and consumers later in the supply chain. Grocery stores are another key site of food loss, tasked with the challenge of keeping shelves filled with full stocks while avoiding overordering.
Even so, 42% of food waste occurs at the level of the consumer. If we take a look at the steps leading up to our tossing of food scraps at the end of a meal, we can find a number of opportunities to minimize our contribution to food waste. Learning to store food properly, prepare appropriate quantities of food and avoid being swayed into impulsive purchases of foods you are unlikely to eat are a few places to start. Additionally, the expiration dates on food labels frequently mislead people into throwing out otherwise good food. While this doesn’t mean food past its labeled expiration date is okay to eat, these dates are not magic numbers. With the exception of infant formula, expiration dates on food labels are neither federally required nor regulated to indicate food safety; rather, manufacturers determine date labels as they see fit.
The food waste conversation has also sparked some creative solutions. Upcycled food, which refers to food products made from ingredients that would otherwise be discarded, has grown in popularity, offering a hopeful reduction in waste from food preparation. Overstock grocery stores and online retailers sell salvaged foodstuffs, often at cheaper prices than conventional grocery stores. Grocers may soon benefit from improvements in artificial intelligence technologies for tracking inventory, thus helping stores avoid overstocking. The compost bins in our own dining halls and compost pickup services, such as Cleveland’s Rust Belt Riders, give food scraps a new life as soil. These innovative approaches give everyone the opportunity to contribute to a healthier environment and keep food from ending up in the garbage.
While food waste is a big problem, there is ample room to have a positive impact. We can address the issue from many angles. People from all different disciplines are able to contribute solutions and implement better systems. It is not an impossible task to reduce our food waste, and it deserves our continued effort.
