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Curries. Burgers. Sushi. Pizzas. Tortillas. As a species, food is central not only to
our survival but also to our cultures. We love food. But as much as we love food, we
also love to throw it away. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that globally
almost ⅓ of food produced for consumption never gets eaten. And in the U.S. that number
is even higher. 40% of the U.S.’s available food supply gets wasted every year. As a report
from the NRDC notes, that’s like buying five bags of groceries at the store and then
just leaving two of them in the parking lot every time you shop. So today, we’re going
to look at food waste with three questions: Why is excessive food waste happening? What
are its environmental consequences? And how can we fix it?
If all the food currently getting thrown into the landfill every year was instead diverted
into meals for those in need, we’d be able to feed as many as 1.8 billion people. On
top of that, food waste has been estimated to be responsible for roughly 8% of global
emissions. If it was a country it would rank third, under China and the United States for
yearly greenhouse gas emissions. So, food waste is one of many issues at the crossroads
of climate action and social justice. Its large emissions footprint not only comes from
all the energy needed to ship, process, and produce the food that ends up in the trash,
but also from the potent methane fumes that food emits as it decomposes in landfills.
But food doesn’t just sprout out of the ground and then magically end up in the trash,
there is a long chain of business and consumer interactions that at any point might turn
perfectly edible food into waste. Simply put, food transforms into trash in two general
areas as it travels from farm to plate: Before the point of sale and after the point of sale.
If we look at this chart, the majority of food waste generated in the United States
comes after the point of sale, but let’s look at food loss before that--on farms and
in grocery stores--in order to understand how this all starts.
Before I transitioned to making YouTube videos full-time, I worked in a number of food related
positions where I saw firsthand how the drive for perfect, abundant produce perpetuated
an unnecessary trend of food waste. As a farmhand at a number of different farms, when I saw
insect bites on arugula leaves or blemishes on peppers and tomatoes, I knew they were
destined to rot. All that time, effort, and fuel wasted because the farm manager knew
that better looking produce will always sell over imperfect ones. These “cosmetically
challenged” products, as they’ve come to be known, can often end up left on the
ground by harvesters or even make their way to landfills adding to piles of food that
decompose and generate harmful emissions. But the aesthetics of produce are just one
part of the picture. Market prices for food can also affect whether crops make it through
the harvest. According to one recent study that analyzed on-farm food loss in California,
33.7% of produce remains unharvested every year. That’s the equivalent of growing 300
acres of cantaloupe and leaving 100 acres of it to decay in the fields, which, according
to an article from Civil Eats, is exactly what happened to sixth-Generation farmer Cannon
Michael. Michael couldn’t “justify paying workers to pick [the cantaloupe] because the
cost of labor, packing, and shipping would have been more than the price he could get
for the fruit.” And even if the food does make it off farms, it still has to navigate
the gauntlet of grocery store aisles. One of the best ways to sell food is through the
illusion of abundance. People shop visually, and to most, that last apple on the shelf
was left there because there was something wrong with it, not because it just happened
to be the last one. In order to appear abundant, grocery stores often overbuy food to trick
people into purchasing items. As a result, produce inevitably goes to waste as it sits
out all day like glorified window dressing. Farmer Delaney Zayac explains this dilemma
in the documentary Just Eat it: “If this was what I had and there was an hour left
in the market, that one bunch of chard would sit there, and no one would buy it. But if
I had 30 bunches of chard all bursting out I'd probably sell 25 bunches of chard.”
So at the grocery store and farmers markets, vendors face an uphill battle against the
old saying “Pile it high and watch it fly.” They need to produce an excess of food to
sell their goods, but that excess can at times lead to more waste.
After the point of sale, the plague of food waste continues. Indeed, household, restaurant,
and food service waste accounts for 69% of the United State’s annual food waste. As
a consumer and lover of food, I’ve tried hard to minimize my waste, but it can be easy
to cook or buy excess that ends up in the compost or trash. For a family of four, household
food waste costs $1,800 annually, and with the average plate size expanding by 36% since
1960 and with refrigerators growing 30% in volume since 1972, it’s tempting to buy
more food just to fill up the space. Overbuying, and the inevitable “cleaning out the refrigerator
activity” that comes with it, can also be attributed to buy-one-get-one promotions or
purchasing in bulk. Our appliances, supermarkets, and even our plates are all nudging us to
buy more. In addition to overbuying, in the United States, there is also a severe lack
of clarity when it comes to dealing with expiration dates and spoiled goods. There are no federal
laws regulating sell-by or expiration dates. As a result labels can mean basically anything
depending on where you buy your food. In Missoula, Montana for example, milk’s sell by date
is set at 12 days after pasteurization, even though the standard is 21 to 24 days. That’s
because, in most cases, these dates are set by the milk producer and not a regulatory
service. As one grocery vendor in Missoula laments “the 12-day sell by date tells a
consumer nothing it's just an arbitrary number somebody came up with no scientific backing
whatsoever.” This lack of clear information regarding when a product actually goes bad
means that households throw out perfectly edible food well before it expires. In short,
there are marketing, labeling, cultural, and psychological forces all coming to play in
order to make food waste a large problem in the United States.
Ultimately, there are many vectors by which food becomes waste, whether in your own home
or even before it makes it onto a grocery store shelf. But there is hope. There are
very tangible solutions to these problems at all levels of the supply chain. At the
individual level solutions look like creating a plan to use all the food you buy, or using
sites like Eat by Date to truly understand whether your food has expired and then composting
it instead of throwing it in the trash. You can even get involved with groups like the
Food Not Bombs which has local chapters all over the world that recover food from local
restaurants and stores and give it to those in need. On the supply side, solutions look
like reducing food demand by eliminating buy-one-get-one promotions, donating food that’s not fit
for sale, or even using boxes and props to maintain the illusion of abundance without
needed excess produce. And on a policy level this means actions like standardizing expiration
dates to accurately reflect the science behind foodborne illnesses. Food waste is a preventable
problem, and addressing food waste means tackling both climate change and hunger in the process.
We don’t necessarily need fancy farming technologies to create more food for people
who go hungry; we need to work together on every level to more equitably distribute the
resources we already have, and in doing so we not only mitigate climate change, but also
create stronger communities.
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Hey everyone, Charlie here. I hope you’re doing well and staying safe. I just wanted
to give a quick shoutout to my Patreon supporters, who give me financial stability in uncertain
times like these. They’re really the backbone of this whole operation and help bring consistency
to my channel. So thank you so much, and I’ll see you in two weeks.