With millions of US households struggling to have enough to eat, and millions of tonnes of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is increasingly being seen as a serious environmental and economic issue.
A report released on Wednesday shows that about 60 million tonnes of food is wasted a year in the US, with an estimated value of US$162 billion. About 32 million tonnes of it ends up in municipal landfills, at a cost of about US$1.5 billion a year to local governments.
The problem is not limited to the US.
The report estimates that one-third of the food produced worldwide is never eaten, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high as US$400 billion a year. Reducing food waste by between 20 and 50 percent globally could save between US$120 billion and US$300 billion a year by 2030, the report found.
GLOBAL ISSUE
“Food waste is a global issue, and tackling it is a priority,” said Richard Swannell, director of sustainable food systems at the Waste and Resources Action Program, an antiwaste organization in Britain that compiled the report. “The difficulty is often in knowing where to start and how to make the biggest economic and environmental savings.”
Food discarded by retailers and consumers in the most developed nation’s would be more than enough to feed all of the world’s 870 million hungry people, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said.
The problem is expected to worsen as the world’s population increases, the report found.
By 2030, as the global middle class expands, consumer food waste will cost US$600 billion a year, unless actions are taken to reduce the waste, the report found.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
Food waste is not only a social cost, but also contributes to growing environmental problems like climate change, experts said, with the production of food consuming vast quantities of water, fertilizer and land. The fuel that is burned to process, refrigerate and transport it increases environmental costs.
Most food waste is discarded in landfills, where it decomposes and emits the potent greenhouse gas methane. Globally, it creates 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases annually — about 7 percent of the total, the report found.
The UN agency says that methane from global landfills are surpassed in emissions by only China and the US.
“Seven percent is not the largest contributor of greenhouse gasses, but it’s not an insignificant amount,” World Resources Institute director of economics Helen Mountford said. “[However] this is one area — reducing food waste — where we can make a difference.”
GOVERNMENT STEPS
Over the past several years, some US cities and counties, including New York City, have started programs to tackle the issue.
Hennepin County, Minnesota, the state’s most populous county, provides grants ranging from US$10,000 to US$50,000 to local business and nonprofits to help recycle food products or turn them into compost.
“There is still a lot in the waste stream,” Hennepin County Environmental Services supervising environmentalist Paul Kroening said. “We are just scratching the surface.”
INDUSTRY EFFORTS
A coalition of food industry trade groups, the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, has also increased efforts to combat food waste.
Meghan Stasz, sustainability director for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, an alliance member, said the group works with supermarket chains to reduce waste by clarifying expiration dates and selling smaller portions.
Stasz said the group was also getting its members to donate more food and make changes in manufacturing processes to reduce the amount of wasted food.
One member, the giant food company ConAgra, changed the way it placed dough in shells for its potpies and saved 235 tonnes of dough in a year.
Swannell applauded those efforts, but said more still needed to be done.
“Awareness of food waste has risen, but we need to do more to tie that awareness to actions on the ground,” he said. “We need to find better ways to deal with food waste, but we need to prevent it in the first place.”
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