In 2019 it was estimated that 40% of all the food produced in the U.S. is wasted. According to the World Resources Institute, if that 40% were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the United States and China. If it were brought down to zero, as much as 11% of greenhouse gas emissions could be eliminated.
US per capita food waste has progressively increased by approximately 50% since 1974. Food waste now accounts for approximately 300 million barrels of oil per year. Uneaten food consumes 4% of GHG emissions, 16% of freshwater use, 16% of cropland use, and 24% of landfill inputs in the U.S.
In 2023, a total of 73.9 million tons of food in the U.S. was wasted, which is 31% of the total food supply and represents 442 pounds of surplus food per person.
While surplus food - food that goes unsold, unused or uneaten - cost the U.S. $338 billion in 2023, 13.5 % of U.S. households are food insecure. Reducing food waste, therefore, is an environmental problem entangled with socio-economic ones, as is often the case. Its causes and solutions are not singular: surplus food and food waste occur at all levels of the food supply chain, from individual decisions to systemic production issues.
In addition, as we bring food waste to rot in landfills, it is producing substantial quantities of methane – a gas with 25 fold more potent global warming potential than CO2.
Food waste is a solvable problem. The best way to prevent waste may be to stop surpluses from occurring in the first place, but that begins when you scrape less off your plate or from your refrigerator, or when you plan more carefully what to buy.
We could reduce the deforestation involved in providing acreage for animals to graze and crops to grow to feed those animals. We could reduce the energy needed to heat, cool, water and care for them, not to mention the labor, transport and packaging. Other solutions include donating, upcycling, using wasted food as animal feed, leaving some crops unharvested, composting and land application. The EPA’s Wasted Food Scale presents these options in order of desirability (See below).
Watch this fascinating TED Talk by food waste expert Dana Gunders on tackling food waste: Click Here.
CREDIT: ReFED
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