Why It Matters

Food waste costs money, of course, but it also has significant societal and environmental impacts.

CHAPTER 2

Why It Matters

FOOD WASTE IS GAINING MORE ATTENTION AS ITS ECONOMIC, SOCIETAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS BECOME KNOWN

The country wastes approximately 63 million tons of food annually, at a cost of more than $218 billion. That’s 1.3% of GDP, growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten.¹

This is only part of the story, however. As the population grows, so will demand for food—at a time when many Americans already struggle with hunger. The solution is not producing more, but using it more wisely. In fact, according to the National Resources Defense Council, food and agriculture consume up to 16% of U.S. energy, almost half of all U.S. land, and 67% of fresh water. In addition, food waste is responsible for at least 2.6% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—equivalent to more than that of 37 million cars.²

The industry’s food waste typically accounts for between 4%–13% of food costs.³

WASTING FOOD WASTES MONEY

Many foodservice operators are literally throwing money in the trash. According to Technomic, 25% (16 million tons) of total food waste in the United States is generated by the foodservice business, at an annual cost of $36.5 billion.

Driven largely by cost savings, nearly all operators (96%) consider food-waste reduction to be important to their businesses. Furthermore, nearly 9 in 10 operators expect food-waste reduction to take on an even greater role in the next two years.⁴

WASTING FOOD HAS SOCIETAL COSTS

In the United States, more than 40 million people are struggling with hunger—more than 12 million of them children.⁵

Communities with the highest rates of food insecurity face a higher prevalence for diseases and other issues that are tied to health problems such as obesity (due to eating lower-quality food), diabetes, or hypertension.⁶ This can lead to difficulties finding and keeping work, unstable family life, homelessness, or—in the case of children—poor school performance.

WASTING FOOD HURTS THE ENVIRONMENT

Each year, 52.4 million tons of food is sent to landfill, and an additional 10.1 million tons remains unharvested at farms, totaling roughly 63 million tons of annual waste.¹

Landfills are, in a word, terrible for the environment. Degradations include GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, land occupation, unnecessary water usage, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and deforestation. The goal of any food-waste reduction strategy should center around keeping it out of landfills.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills account for approximately 14% of human-related methane emissions in the United States.⁷

^{_{Sources: [1] ReFED, “A Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste by 20 Percent” (2016). [2] Natural Resources Defense Council, “Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill” (2017). [3] Datassential, “Waste Not” (2019). [4] Technomic, “The Benefits of Waste Reduction and How to Achieve Them” (2019). [5] USDA (2017). [6] Feeding America, “Map the Meal Gap” (2019). [7] Environmental Protection Agency (2017).}}