In September 2015, the U.S. set an ambitious target of reducing its food loss and waste by 50 percent. The idea was to reduce the amount of food that ends up in landfills, where it emits greenhouse gases as it decomposes, a major factor contributing to climate change.
Researchers at UC Davis looked at state policies across the country and estimated how much food waste each state was likely reducing in 2022. They found that, without more work being done at the federal level, no state is on track to achieve the national waste reduction goal.
Researchers calculated that, even when taking reduction measures into account, the U.S. still generates about 328 pounds of food waste per person annually — which is also how much waste was being generated per person in 2016, shortly after the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the waste-cutting goal.
These figures indicate that even our best strategies for eliminating waste aren’t enough to meet our goals, said Sarah Kakadellis, lead author of the study published in Nature this month.
In order to assess how the U.S. is doing to meet its food waste reduction goals, Kakadellis and her team used both publicly available data (from ReFED, a nonprofit that monitors food waste in the U.S.) and estimates based on the current policy landscape.
The study’s findings were “not surprising” given the absence of federal policy governing food waste, said Lori Leonard, chair of the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. “People are trying to do what they can at state and municipal levels,” she said. “But we really need national leadership on this issue.”
Kakadellis suggests that a path forward will also necessitate shifting the way consumers think about certain waste management strategies — like composting.
Composting turns organic material, like food scraps, into a nutrient-rich mixture that can be used to fertilize new plants and crops. It can be considered a form of “recycling” food, although its end product technically cannot be eaten. This important detail means consumers must learn to view composting, despite its potential environmental benefits, as a form of food waste, says Kakadellis.
“It’s really thinking about the best use of food, which is to eat it,” she said.
Although it’s been touted as a great alternative to chucking your moldy bananas in the trash, composting is indeed classified as a form of food waste by the United Nations and the European Union. In 2021, the EPA updated its definition of food waste to include composting and anaerobic digestion — both of which can take inputs like uneaten food and turn them into fertilizer or biogas, respectively.
In updating its guidance, the EPA published a food waste hierarchy — which shows the best way to reduce food waste is to prevent it. This includes things like adding accurate date-labels to food products, so consumers aren’t confused about when something they’ve purchased has gone bad or is no longer safe to eat. It’s also preferable to find another use for unsold or uneaten food — like donating it to food banks or integrating into animal feed, where it can be used to raise livestock (assuming that livestock will also eventually feed humans).
Composting will always have a role to play in diverting food waste from landfills — because those operations can accept spoiled or rotten food, which food banks, for example, cannot. “It’s not an either/or. They have to go hand in hand,” said Kakadellis. “But we’re skipping all these other steps and we’re going straight to the recycling too often.”
Leonard agrees, pointing out the high costs associated with ensuring the nation’s sprawling, complex food system runs smoothly: from the farm where crops are harvested to the trucks and cold storage that handle packaged goods. “There’s a tremendous amount of energy that’s gone into producing that food,” she said. “We don’t do that to create compost. You know, we do that to feed people.”
Composting, of course, serves more than one purpose and has environmental benefits beyond lowering food loss and waste. For example, it replenishes soils. But Leonard notes that if more work were done on the prevention side — like, making sure farms aren’t overproducing food — then soils wouldn’t be so depleted in the first place and wouldn’t need so much remediation.
Both Leonard and Kakadellis emphasize that no one tool for avoiding sending food to landfills should be off the table. Leonard, who previously worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, once did research on organics bans in other states.
“I asked them if they were encouraging businesses or households to move up the EPA hierarchy and find other, better uses for their food scraps? And they said, no, no. What we’re really trying to do is just get people to do anything on the hierarchy.” That includes composting.
Until there are more options for both pre- and post-consumer food waste, composting may be the best, most accessible option for many people. “It is the easiest thing to do,” said Leonard. “And it’s probably the safest thing to do until we have better protocols in place.”
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/the-us-wants-cut-food-waste-in-half-were-not-even-close/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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