The Impact of Food Waste and How You Can Reduce It!

Food waste is a major concern all around the world. It comes to play in political topics such as agricultural sustainability, economic matters, environmental concerns and feeding the world. The agriculture industry has its fair share of food waste, but so does every individual I know (at least here in America). I know I am definitely guilty. The problem has become so large that Congresswoman Chellie Pingree wants to propose legislation to help address the problem on our home turf. Pingree says that “40% of food in the U.S. is wasted.”¹ That is a ridiculous amount for such an advanced country to be losing. Pingree also said that there are four levels to our food waste problem:

1)                       restaurant and retail

2)                     institutions (school,assisted living, etc.)

3)                     consumer

4)                     farm

I believe the biggest problem here in America is the consumers. The shoppers. You and I.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste makes up greater than 20% of landfills. A survey done by the American Chemical Council shows that Americans throw $640 of food away each year². I don’t know about you, but I was appalled. I have never really thought about how much money I’m throwing away by throwing out my food. To address this problem, we need to be more aware of what we are buying, how much we are buying, and how we are cooking. Here are some simple ways that you can help reduce the impact of food waste:

Eat Leftovers. This you can do when you eat out or at home. When you go to restaurants and can’t finish all of your food, take it home with you! If you made a big meal at home, save it to make another meal, or use it for lunch the next day. Don’t throw it out. An article by USA Today says that even when people do save leftovers, they end up throwing some out monthly².  

Make Smaller Meals. If you have a big family, it makes sense to make big meals. Believe me I know it’s hard to cook a satisfying meal for only one or two people, but try not to do it so often if you can’t eat it all and don’t like leftovers.

Don’t Grocery Shop on an Empty Stomach. This can help save you time as well as money. When you shop hungry, you often buy more than you need. The problem with this is that a lot of people buy too many perishable items such as meat and it goes bad before you can cook it.

Freeze Items When You Buy in Bulk. If you do buy excess meat or other food items that can be frozen, freeze it until the day you want to use it. This can help you stock up on sale items, and still be able to use them before they go to waste. 

When I met Temple Grandin a few days ago, I had the opportunity to ask her about food waste. She said that food waste should be the number one problem we fix to increase sustainability (being able to feed the world when there is 9 billion people). I smiled when she told me that she was taught that wasting food is a sin. She thinks that restaurants should serve smaller portions and in grocery stores should sell more single-serving foods. She also believes (as do I) in low level rendering of meat products. I will do a post on this later if I get enough comments, but it is known to the public as pink slime. If low level rendering was not used, it would be the equivalent of 1.2 million head of cattle lost each year. In Dr. Grandin’s words “it’s like taking two truckloads (76 head) of cattle and machine gunning them down. Every day.”

What about school lunch programs? I believe that the requirements implemented by current policy are contributing to more food waste than ever before. To buy a school lunch, kids are required to get a milk, fruit, vegetable and protein source. I personally didn’t drink milk in elementary through high school. A lot of kids are lactose intolerant and can’t drink it. I would give my milk to someone who wanted it (although it was prohibited if a teacher saw, due to sanitary reasons) but otherwise threw it away if nobody wanted it. The School Nutrition Association did a study that shows that kids are throwing out the healthier, unwanted foods, doubling food waste in the school system³. A group of moms in Barrington, Illinois started a food sorting campaign where unopened, cold milks, untouched apples, etc. go to families in need⁴.

On the retail and restaurant side of things, our biggest problem is throwing out food that is “out of date” or not fresh. Panera Bakery and 7Eleven both have awesome programs to give out food (mainly bakery items) that is not sold that day. Food that is made wrong in restaurants but went untouched is thrown away also.

As for waste on the farm level, the hardest part is for countries who don’t have access to the technologies America has. While we have refrigerated trucks that can take food where it needs to go, many producers in other countries can’t afford them, and fresh meat goes bad quickly during transport. In the U.S. food waste at the farm level is not as big of a deal as other countries.

         I would like to leave you with this. Be mindful of what you are doing with food as a consumer. Even if each of us make one small adjustment, imagine how much food waste could be reduced. We could reduce the amount of landfills needed to hold this waste. This is such an important matter when we talk about policies being created, sustainability, and economics. Remember that while you save money by reducing food waste, you also help reduce landfill sizes in turn reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced as well as saving food for someone else to use.  So be a savvy citizen when you think about policies that deal with food/nutrition and be an educated consumer when it comes to shopping. Please leave comments below, and tell me if there are any topics you would like me to cover!

1.               Gabbett, Rita J. "Meatingplace.com." Meatingplace.com. N.p., 22 Oct. 15. Web. 23 Oct. 2015. <http://www.meatingplace.com/Industry/News/Details/62108>.

2.             Malcom, Hadley. "US Households Trash $640 In Food Each Year." USA Today (2015): n. pag. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.

3.             Johnson, Nathaniel. "Michelle Obama’s Food Fight With GOP: Schools Just Want To Have Funds." Grist (2014): n. pag. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.

4.             Formichella, Michael. "Wasted..." Meatingplace (2015): n. pag. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.