Food Waste Intelligence

Closing out a year with increasing focus on the importance of food waste reduction, the U.S. released its Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics in early December.

Release of the Draft National Strategy is significant, and in fact long overdue, as the U.S. committed to halving food loss and waste reduction in support of Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) back in 2015 – and a united, measurement-focused strategy is needed to get the U.S. on the proper pathway with urgency.

Earlier this month, the US EPA’s food recovery hierarchy, the upside downtriangle which has guided food waste reduction efforts since the 1990s, got a makeover.

And that’s a good thing, as it reflects the continued evolution of research and elevation of activity on food waste reduction.

In December of 2019, the United Nations General Assembly designated September 29 as the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. UN leaders sought to raise awareness of the scope and scale of the global food waste challenge to speed progress toward Target 12.3 – the global goal of halving food waste by 2030.

As we celebrate the fourth annual observance this week, we remain excited by the fact that food loss and waste is now explicitly recognized on the UN calendar – and we believe this date is only growing in importance.

At Leanpath we have long recognized the connection between food waste and climate change.  That critical connection is foundational to our mission of making food waste prevention and measurement everyday practice in the world’s kitchens. 

The food waste-climate connection has been amplified by many organizations.  For example, the UNFAO famouslynoted years ago that if ranked as a country, food waste would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions behind the U.S. and China. The World Wildlife Fund recentlyfound that global food wastage accounts for up to 10% of global emissions. And the Project Drawdown teamcited food waste reduction as one of the top solutions to climate change.

In addition, UK-basedWRAP highlighted a critical point in a recent report (Food Loss and Waste: From Commitments to Action) that bears repeating: We cannot achieve net zero emissions without tackling food loss and waste. 

We are all seeing signs of emissions-driven climate change around the world in recent weeks in the form of record temperatures, drought, fires, and floods, and we think it is important to highlight stories reflecting those signals.

In late April the ReFED team released new estimates on U.S. food waste in its Insights Engine – a valuable tool to help all interested food system stakeholders learn more about the amount and causes of food waste in the U.S., its environmental impact, and the types and effectiveness of solutions to address it.

Among many notable stats was the finding that by the time food gets to a foodservice kitchen’s back door, it already contains 80% of its greenhouse gas load. Further proof that food waste prevention—actually stopping food waste from being generated—is the most effective way for kitchens to reduce their carbon footprint when they address food waste.