A Closer Look at Food Waste: How Much Do We Really Throw Away?
Photo by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on Unsplash
If you live in America, chances are you know we don't mess around when it comes to portion sizes. When you go out to eat, it's sometimes hard to imagine finishing that plate with three different sides or that burger that is the size of your head. If you think ahead, you may wrap up your order to-go and save it for later, but unfortunately, leftovers are likely thrown away either at the restaurant or at home when you forget about it.
It is ingrained in our American culture to order more, buy more, and produce more food. However, so far, it is not in our culture to redirect this now hypothetical mountain of wasted food to benefit people or the planet.
The US Department of Agriculture reported that 30-40% of our food supply becomes "wasted food." In 2020 that number almost surpassed 40%, equating to 40 billion lbs of food and 160-200 billion in economic losses (USDA). While this wasted food is due to a handful of reasons, a huge portion of that is perfectly edible food lost to overproduction, overbuying, confusion over expiration labels, and lack of infrastructure to deal with scraps or surplus in a positive way.
Where does it all go? Food that spoils in fields (an increasingly prominent issue amidst the pandemic), "imperfect" produce, unbought perishables, mistakenly expired food, and after-meal scraps are likely tossed in with other inorganic garbage. Currently, only 5% of American food waste is composted, making uneaten food the largest component in municipal landfills (EPA).
Photo by Eva Elijas from Pexels
Now, it's not just the food that has gone to waste. Resources involved in a production like water, land, energy, and labor are all included in the multitude of food waste impacts. Wasting food also wastes these resources and emits greenhouse gases used in production and in the decay of tossed-out food. Organic material that ends up in landfills gets suffocated by layers of other material, and without oxygen, their decomposition reactions produce methane, a greenhouse gas more harmful than carbon dioxide.
Okay, now take a deep breath! Being a food justice advocate in the face of what seems like an insurmountable problem can feel daunting. However, rising awareness in the last decade surrounding wasted food has been seen in state legislation to divert food waste to private-sector composting organizations and food relief programs. More people are keen on backyard composting and mindful grocery practices than ever before. This is an issue with viable solutions; we have the capacity to divert wholesome nutrition from landfills to food relief agencies, biofuel programs or to be composted to return these nutrients back to the soil. As it turns out, most of these solutions are community-based or grassroots lead-treating the issue from the standpoint of people who are deeply affected by it because, well, we are.
At Farm2People, we saw this hypothetical mountain of "wasted" food as an opportunity. Last year when COVID-19 hit the globe, we saw more of our neighbors struggle with food insecurity. At the same time, our friends in agriculture had no one to buy their perfectly good produce. Knowing that 50 million Americans-including 17 million children, were facing food insecurity in 2020 (Feeding America), we saw the need to make that connection to our wasted food supply. Before the last efforts to compost uneaten food, we connect our friends in agriculture with surplus produce to Los Angeles-based food relief programs. We know that this issue requires legislative and collective action. Still, we also are aware that the benefits of helping our community keep food on the table and out of the landfill have an everlasting ripple effect.
Please consider joining our mission to tackle food waste and food insecurity. We are completely volunteer-run and rely on donating partners and individuals to drive our food redirection programs. Become a part of a ripple effect that will change the world!