United States releases national food waste strategy

Three United States federal agencies have released the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. In line with the recently released U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Wasted Food Scale, the strategy prioritizes food waste prevention–stopping food waste from being created to begin with–which is the solution Leanpath provides to the foodservice industry.This is the first interagency national strategy that lays out a path for the United States to meet its national goal to halve food loss and waste by 2030. To help advance progress toward this goal, the Biden-Harris Administration has invested more than $200 million to reduce food loss and waste.

"It's exciting that the U.S. now has a national strategy for food loss and waste reduction aligned with our early national commitment to Target 12.3 of the SDGs," says Leanpath Vice President of Sustainability and Public Affairs Steve Finn. "And it's gratifying to see the emphasis on the prevention of food loss and food waste, which is the point of maximum societal benefit."

Recent EPA research shows that 58 percent of methane emissions released to the atmosphere from landfills are from food waste,” the EPA states. “Each year in the U.S., food loss and waste create potent greenhouse gas pollutants equal to the emissions of 60 coal-fired power plants.”

Enough water is required to grow and process that food waste to supply 50 million homes with water every year.

To address these and other impacts of food waste, the coordinating agencies–the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration–highlighted four objectives within the strategy: 

Objective 1: Prevent food loss.
Objective 2: Prevent food waste. 
Objective 3: Increase the recycling rate for all organic waste.  
Objective 4: Support policies that incentivize and encourage the prevention of food loss and waste and organics recycling.

For each objective, the strategy highlights actions the agencies could take, including:

• Develop and lead a national consumer education and behavior change campaign. 
• Test innovative approaches to reducing food waste across the supply chain. 
• Support the development of additional organics recycling infrastructure through grants and other assistance for all communities, and especially those that are underserved. 
• Expand the market for products made from recycled organic waste. 

The strategy points out the broad benefits of food waste prevention:

• The potential to advance food and nutrition security for Americans and increase the recovery/rescue and donation rate of food. 
• Expanding or creating jobs, financial opportunities, industries, and sectors in materials management or food waste reduction, including commercialization of new innovations that reduce food loss and waste. 
• Increasing supply chain resilience—by building stronger linkages among stakeholders. 
• Delivering financial savings to households and businesses.

"The new Strategy reflects a continuous stream of positive steps on the food waste front," continues Finn, "including new reports from USEPA on the environmental impacts of food waste, a timely revision to the traditional Food Waste Hierarchy, and many state level initiatives on food waste reduction -- and it is another significant and much needed step to accelerate the pace of food waste reduction in the U.S.  All of these efforts highlight that this is very much a 'game on' moment -- urgency, bold commitment, and effective actions to cut food waste are needed -- and at Leanpath we are all in." 

Read a statement on the strategy here and access the full strategy here.