Trash Talk #2: Reducing Food Waste

“One-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year.” The greatest culprits of food waste are the United States, Canada, Europe, Industrialized Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

While both high- and low-income countries grow food that never makes it to the table, the reasons for it are different.

In low-income countries, food waste is typically the result of poor infrastructure, where food spoils along supply chains before it even reaches distribution. In high-income countries however, a shockingly large portion of food waste occurs due to intentional reasons — produce that is rejected for not being “pretty” enough, leftovers forgotten in the back of an abundant fridge, and even cultural norms that exaggerate the luxury of ordering and consuming excess food at social events.

The destination of wasted food is most often straight into landfills; in the United States, the EPA estimates that “more food reaches landfills and incinerators than any other single material in our everyday trash.”

How does food waste contribute to climate change?

1. Food is much more than just what ends up on your plate. When we throw food in the trash, we are not only throwing away all of the resources that went into its production (land, water, pesticides, fertilizers, labor, fuel, and energy) but also all the greenhouse gas emissions associated with every step.
2. There is sometimes the misconception that even if food is thrown away, it will eventually break down and return to the earth. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Within landfills, organic compounds in food are tightly compressed among plastic and other trash without access to oxygen, and cannot decompose properly. Instead they rot, producing methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas over 20x more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

(Depending on the projection scenario) Project Drawdown rates reducing food waste as the #1 solution to combating climate change. Luckily for us, because so much of food waste happens at the level of the home, it’s an area where we can immediately take steps to reduce our impact.

Sources of food waste in the United States. Source: rts.com

Here are a few ideas to consider:

• “Shop your fridge” before heading to the grocery store. Then, use a list. Various meal planning tools can also help you determine the correct amount of food to buy.
• Learning how to store fruits and vegetables properly can prevent them from spoiling before they are used.
• Freezing also greatly extends the life of food that you can’t eat immediately — for example, if you are heading out on a weeklong trip but still have a few tomatoes on the counter and some leftover kale in the fridge. Freeze them for future soups!
• When cooking, consider how you can use parts of fruits and vegetables that you’d normally throw away. For example, potatoes can be cooked with the skin on, broccoli stems tossed in stir fries, and bruised fruit blended into smoothies. Personally, I’ve recently become a big fan of making apple chips from apple peels — they’re addicting!
• During meals, make it a practice to only fill your plate with what you will eat. You can always go back for seconds.
• At restaurants, order just what is needed and not more. Encourage this behavior especially in large groups, where the social nature of sharing a meal can often lead to ordering too much.
• If there are leftovers, take them home to give them a second life! Perhaps you can incorporate some leftover vegetables into an omelette, or fold your leftover french fries into a California burrito.
• Lastly, for any food scraps you can’t consume, look into local composting. Composting allows food waste to go back into the soil to nurture the next generation of crops, rather than rotting in a landfill and creating even more greenhouse gases.

Building in habits of of organization, awareness, and creativity in the kitchen can go a long way towards reducing each of our food waste footprints.