Why the Majority of Food Waste Happens at Home
For the purposes of this article, “food waste” and “FLW” will be used interchangeably when referring to food loss and waste.
The topic of food waste has gained national attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several mainstream media sources were showing dairy farmers pouring out thousands of gallons of milk, tractors plowing ripe produce back into the ground, and heaps of fruits and vegetables left to rot all because of supply-chain disruptions.
Food waste is not a new issue, but the increased media coverage contrasting empty store shelves with extreme over-supplies of produce on farms has opened space for a discussion of our ongoing food waste epidemic.
How is food waste defined?
Food loss specifically refers to food that is intended for human consumption, but factors on the production end (poor harvesting techniques, storage facilities, transportation, etc), become reduced in quality to the point where it is no longer fit for human consumption.
Food waste refers to food intended for human consumption that is intentionally disposed of or discarded. This can be due to cosmetic imperfections, spoilage from ignoring an expiration date, not wanting to store left-overs or other neglect. Both food loss and waste can be reduced and controlled.
Infographic source: https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
For more on the hierarchy, visit EPA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy website.
Why does food waste matter?
Besides the social implications of wasting food while others go hungry, FLW has a gigantic ecological impact.
According to the World Economic Forum, if the carbon footprint of food waste was ranked as a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gas, only behind the US and China. This number includes:
emissions from farm equipment
factories that sort, clean, cut, and package food
trucks, boats, and airplanes that transport food from around the globe
and more
All before any food makes it into someone’s refrigerator.
In addition to the greenhouse gas and energy lost with FLW, approximately half of the water that goes into producing foods for the US is wasted along with our food. Agriculture is the largest human use of our limited supply of freshwater.
Food, mostly from consumers, tops the charts as the number one item in US landfills. As food decomposes, it releases greenhouse gasses like methane and nitrous oxide. This makes landfills the third largest source of methane, an extremely heavy and thus impactful greenhouse gas, in the United States.
Food Waste on the Supply Chain
Food doesn’t magically show up at our dinner tables or on grocery store shelves. We often only consider the food waste that occurs after we’ve received the food, but what happens and what food is being wasted before we even make our grocery lists?
The United States loses 30-40% of the total food supply each year. This equates to about $161 billion in food losses in 2012. This amounts to a loss of 67 million tons/year at consumer level, 52 million tons at industrial, commercial, institutional levels, and 49 million tons at the producer/pre-harvest level. To help you wrap your head around this astonishing amount, compare the total food wasted per year (~168 tons) to the derived weight of the moon (~73 tons).
This debunks the common excuse that FLW is the sole responsibility of producers. Consumer action can and will make a large impact in the fight to decrease food waste.
That’s not to say that no food is wasted before consumers get their hands on it. So, where on the production line is food being tossed?
Food waste on farms
There are three main factors that play into why farmers are discarding food:
Aesthetic Standards
When supply outweighs demand, food is wasted. Growers are incentivized to overplant to ensure they meet the quantities promised to markets. Hedging their bets in case of fires, floods, and pestilence (among other farming disasters that decrease crop yield) leads to an overproduction of crops even if conditions are “average.”
Spoilage of once-edible food can happen at any stage of the food production and consumption chain. At the farm level, it mainly occurs due to mishandling of foods during mechanical harvest (leading to crushing/bruising/etc), failing to harvest during the appropriate time frame (leading to over-ripening or rotting of food while still in the fields), or through incorrect storage of food leading to mold, pests, and rot.
Then we have the strict quality and aesthetic standards put onto farmers by grocery stores and distribution centers. These unrealistic expectations of “perfect” looking produce reappear throughout the food chain. Farmers never want to throw out food, but they are often forced too, simply because an item isn’t quite perfect in shape or size.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Food waste during processing and distribution
Most food waste from the processing and distribution stages occur in developing countries. With that being said, there are strategies that can help reduce FLW in developed countries as well.
Product damage
Bruising, crushing, slicing, or denting can all occur when delicate produce is handled without proper equipment and care. Such bumps and bruises can cause produce to be deemed “ugly” or unsellable even if it is still safe for human consumption.
Spoilage
Lack of adequate refrigerated transportation largely impacts developing countries but some effects can be felt globally.
The farther a product requiring refrigeration must travel to the market or consumer, the higher the risk of spoilage and the larger its carbon footprint. This assumes that the infrastructure to support refrigerated storage and transportation exists in an affordable and accessible way in the region which is not always the case.
Inadequate staff training
Inadequate training can cause both of the FLW scenarios above and have significant impacts on food safety, quality and appearance. Improper handling, unsafe use of pesticides, poor hygiene, and improper storage can all be theoretically eliminated with thorough staff training.
Waste for the sake of uniformity
Many processing plants, especially those in the meat industry, will dispose of any product that disrupts the goal of uniformity. Meat plants “trim” off significant amounts of safe, edible meat to ensure the product is the correct shape and size for the following processing steps.
Think about a traditional butcher shop-- almost all of the animal parts are used in one way or another. In stark contrast, large processing plants toss their “trimmings” and any other parts of the animal that aren't needed for their product because they can afford to do so.
Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash
Food waste at market
Aesthetics
Due to a variety of societal factors including the rise of food images on social media, consumers expect gorgeously-colored, symmetrical produce.
Although this is a consumer-driven trend, grocery stores have a role to play as well. Markets routinely reject produce due to strict size, shape, weight, and appearance standards.
Fully-stocked shelves
Many markets have a wide array of similar products that vary only by manufacturer or another minute difference. This is caused by both consumer expectations and bulk purchasing from manufacturers necessary for shops to get competitive pricing.
Although the increased variety helps sales margins, it exponentially increases the chances “of some of [the products] reaching their “sell-by” date before being sold, and thereby wasted.”
Donating unsold products
State and federal regulations give little to no direction on how businesses can safely donate unsold food products. This lack of knowledge leaves markets and other large food vendors confused and a disincentive to donate.
Because neither regulators (think health inspectors) nor potential donors know how to address concerns over the safety of food donations, a majority of it (~90%) gets tossed. This is a huge missed opportunity as the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act protects most donors from liability as long as the food is “apparently fit for consumption.” There is room for improved (or any) guidance from federal and state authorities on food donations.
Photo by Mert Demirhan on Unsplash
Food waste in restaurant & schools
America is the land of plenty and nowhere is this more obvious than our oversized portions. Around half a pound of food per meal is wasted in restaurants. This number is a combination of food wasted in the kitchen and that which is left-over after customers are finished eating. 85% of this uneaten food gets thrown away instead of composted, donated, or used as animal feed.
Food Waste on a Consumer Level
In affluent countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tracked that more food waste happens further down the line with consumers.
Confusion on how to properly store foods and the meaning of stamped dates leads to unintentional waste. We tend to store foods the way our parents did while we were growing up instead of basing decisions on expert-tested methods.
Are you part of a “throw it all in the fridge” family?
One that leaves butter out all of the time so it's spreadable?
Or maybe you toss leftovers after 24 hours for fear of them having gone bad?
My grandmother won’t eat yogurt that's more than a week old, even if it isn’t near its “best by” date. Properly storing food and understanding what different stamped dates mean can make a sizable impact on household food waste and lessens the tossing of food “just in case.”
As food waste and climate change author John Mandyck put it, “Food is relatively inexpensive in the United States. If we throw away the 99-cent yogurt because we were confused about the date label, we simply go back and get another 99-cent yogurt.”
Compared to other countries, food in the US is cheaper and more widely available. This leads to an extreme undervaluing of and lack of appreciation for our food.
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash
Overproduction of Food during COVID-19
Approximately half of all food grown in the US is supplied to schools, hotels, and restaurants. With the closing of many such institutions during the pandemic, major disruptions in delicate food supply chains has caused a significant increase of FLW.
According to a New York Times article from April of this year, the amount of food being wasted is absurd, “the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.” All amounting to a 1.32 billion dollar loss for producers between March and May of this year.
This gargantuan amount of waste is happening in conjunction with growing food insecurity across the country.
The disconnect between farmers plowing crops back into their fields and empty bellies across the nation is due to a shift in demand from bulk to small-scale distribution. With many bulk buyers (restaurants, schools, resorts, etc.) being shut-down or scaled back, the demand has shifted to individuals buying food for their households.
Products sold in bulk vs those sold to individuals have different packaging and distribution chains that are not easily interchanged. Farmers who usually supply to bulk buyers are faced with a lose-lose situation: they either change their distribution strategy as quickly as possible (very costly), or plow veggies back into the ground and save the money it would cost to prepare and package the produce. Either way, profit margins are virtually non-existent.
Some actions are being taken to lessen the production-centered food waste due to COVID-19. Direct sales of produce or farm co-op boxes have helped farmers reach buyers directly. Still, most of these initiatives are not reaching the people that need them most.