It's Time To Get Serious About Reducing Food Waste, Feds Say
Word that Americans throw away about one-third of our available food has been getting around.
Now there's an official goal aimed at reducing that waste.
Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency — along with many private-sector and food-bank partners — announced the first ever national target for food waste.
"[We're] basically challenging the country to reduce food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tells The Salt.
Currently, Vilsack says, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is wasted each year. And if that's hard to fathom, picture this: "It's enough to fill the Sears Tower [technically now called the Willis Tower] 44 times," Vilsack says.
As for who's responsible? Well, pretty much everyone who eats.
We consumers let a lot of food wilt or go sour in our refrigerators. And we may toss out items when they pass their sell-by dates — even though the food is still safe to consume.
On farms, there's a lot of waste generated — as we documented in this story about lettuce grown in California — when food not quite up to cosmetic standards isn't harvested. Often times, food also ends up in landfills because it won't stay fresh long enough to be shipped across the country.
About 1,249 calories per American per day are wasted, according to U.S. Close to three-quarters of this calorie loss came from added fats and oils, grain products and added sugars and sweeteners, partly reflecting the high caloric density of these foods relative to other food groups.
Restaurants and grocery stores generate a lot of waste, too.
There are a lot of initiatives already underway to address food waste. For instance, the Food Recovery Challenge at the EPA is helping food manufacturers and grocers donate more food.
And, increasingly, as we showed in this video, grocery stores are buying and selling imperfect, or ugly, produce. In addition, restaurants are turning to new technology to help them track and identify opportunities to cut waste.
Food waste in biodegradable bags in a dumpster at Portland International Airport in Portland, Ore., Thursday Nov. 20, 2008.
Vilsack says food waste isn't just an economic issue — it also is a big contributor of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that fuels climate change. Think about where most of it is tossed: "Basically, it ends up in landfills," Vilsack says. And it's the single greatest contributor to municipal landfills, according to USDA.
Here's another way to understand the significance of food waste: Tossing out food wastes fossil fuels used to grow and ship food.
"When you look at the oil that's used in producing food that's wasted, it's 70 times the amount of oil that we lost in the Deepwater Horizon disaster," Vilsack says.
For now, the national 50 percent waste reduction goal will be voluntary. But to meet it, Vilsack says, many of the initiatives already underway can be scaled up. "Rather than pitch [food], let's figure out how to redirect it," and salvage it, says Vilsack.
For instance, Americans need more education on how to shop and cook in ways that reduce the losses in our own refrigerators. (We'll have more tips on this tomorrow.)
And schools, institutions and local governments can do a lot more to cut back on, recover and recycle food waste. In some states and cities, they're already required to. As we've reported, Seattle now fines homeowners for not sorting their garbage. And Massachusetts has implemented a food waste ban for certain institutions, with a handful of other states following suit.
As for what Congress might be able to help with, Vilsack says it's mulling legislation that would increase tax deductions for farmers and other big wasters who donate food to the needy.
Vilsack says the public awareness needed around food waste reminds him of another problem our nation tackled back in the 1960s and 1970s: litter.
There was a time when people rolled down their windows and tossed trash on to highways. "It was quite common when I was a kid," Vilsack says.
But now, this is not culturally acceptable. That's because there was a massive public education campaign. Schoolkids were told to tell their parents to stop littering. And, Vilsack says, it was successful.
Now, he says, the goal is to "create a generation of Americans that are sensitive to food waste."
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Transcript
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And here's a startling number about a preventable loss. The average American family throws away a quarter of the food it buys each year. And in hopes of changing that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency have announced the first-ever national goal for reducing food waste. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: The USDA estimates that America wastes 133 billion pounds of food a year. Now, to get a sense of how much that is, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says think of a certain Chicago skyscraper.
TOM VILSACK: It's enough to fill 44 Sears Towers.
AUBREY: The Sears Tower is now called the Willis Tower, but you get the point. It's a lot.
VILSACK: And basically it ends up, for the most part, in landfills.
AUBREY: Where it rots and creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change. And given how much water and energy it takes to produce food, the effects of food waste are even greater. To make Americans more conscious of this problem, Vilsack along with the EPA and partners including grocery stores and food banks, have joined together to announce a new national goal.
VILSACK: Basically challenge the country to reduce food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030.
AUBREY: Vilsack says there are lots of ways to make this happen. Farms and grocery stores can scale up efforts to donate food, and in our own homes, lots of us can make simple changes that may help. Given our current habits, the typical American household tosses out $1,500 worth of food every year. Here's Dana Gunders of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
DANA GUNDERS: It's like walking out of the grocery store with four bags of food, dropping one in the parking lot, and not even bothering to pick it up at all. And that's crazy.
AUBREY: Gunders says a lot of what we toss out is still OK. We tend to take sell-by dates on food a little too seriously.
GUNDERS: A lot of people misunderstand expiration dates.
AUBREY: The dates stamped on food are really a manufacturer's best guess as to when a product is at its freshest. So...
GUNDERS: Often the products can be eaten days, weeks, even months after those dates.
AUBREY: Take eggs, they're usually good for weeks after the sell-by date. And you can actually test them. Put them in a bowl of water and if they sink to the bottom, they're still good. Gunders says even food that looks bad may be OK.
GUNDERS: Most vegetables that wilt can be soaked in a bowl of ice water, and that will crisp them up.
AUBREY: And that milk that's gone a little sour? It's actually safe to use in your pancake or biscuit batter.
GUNDERS: I had no idea, but actually cooking with sour milk is delicious. It substitutes for buttermilk.
AUBREY: Now, don't go overboard here. Foods like meat and poultry have higher risks of contamination. If they smell bad or look off, it's probably best just to toss them in the trash. Allison Aubrey, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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