Food Waste 101

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines food waste as any food that is not used for its intended purpose. The term chiefly refers to uneaten or spoiled food but also includes scraps, like peels, pits, and bones (which we can’t eat as is, but we can repurpose). 

The agency also emphasizes that the best way to avoid wasted food in the first place is to produce, buy, and sell only what’s needed—ensuring our food system better matches production with what people actually consume. Consumers have a role to play in food waste prevention too, of course. Toward this end, NRDC’s Save the Food site offers meal planning and shopping tips as well as recipes to help you use up what’s on hand.

Wasted food can be managed through a handful of different pathways, outlined below from the most to the least sustainable options:

Donation and upcycling

Food that goes unsold or uneaten and meets food safety requirements can be rescued and donated to feed people—the most sustainable path for surplus food. Increasingly, grocery stores, restaurants, caterers, farmers, and even schools are seeking out ways to ensure healthy uneaten food goes directly to the community members who need it. NRDC and its partners have worked with policymakers to simplify this mission by advocating for legislation like the 2023 federal Food Donation Improvement Act. 

Alternatively, upcycling involves repurposing food parts that might otherwise be thrown away into new tasty products. This can be something as simple as turning bread crusts into croutons or blending wrinkly peaches into a smoothie—essentially anything that would keep you from tossing the food out. Many businesses are also getting into the upcycling game, cooking up avocado pit tea or veggie broth concentrate made from fresh-cut vegetable remnants. Both of these are ideal pathways for food that would otherwise be wasted: The food continues to nourish people, and we avoid wasting the resources used to produce it. 

Animal feed

Other food waste gets turned into meals for animals. Feeding food scraps to livestock that people will eventually eat keeps the food within our supply chain and can be an economical solution for both food retailers, who would otherwise have to pay to haul what they can’t sell to a landfill, and farmers, who can save on buying (and potentially, on growing) conventional animal feed. Some farmers leave their wasted crops unharvested altogether and let animals graze on them in the fields. This saves the resources involved in the harvesting, processing, packaging, and distribution steps and leaves the plant nutrients for the animals and soil. 

Composting

Next up is composting, in which organic matter goes through a biological decomposition process that results in a nutrient-rich matter that is ideal for fertilizing plants and boosting soil quality. (Not only is this good for our plants but also our waterways, as healthy soil helps to filter out stormwater pollutants.) While we should prioritize preventing food from going to waste and donating surplus food, there will always be some inedible scraps that need to be managed, and composting is ideal for that. On a small scale, the process is easy to undertake at home. Many cities make the job even easier by allowing residents to drop off food waste at municipal collection bins. Some have also introduced public curbside collection programs.

Anaerobic digestion 

Some cities process food waste at anaerobic digestion facilities, which break down organic matter in an oxygen-free environment. (In contrast, the composting process requires oxygen to work.) Anaerobic digestion generates biogas, which is primarily composed of methane and carbon dioxide and can be used as an alternative to fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the biogas is often flared, producing air pollution on par with the emissions from the combustion of fracked (natural) gas. For this and other reasons, environmental advocates recommend municipalities use it sparingly, alongside more sustainable forms of organics recycling. The more beneficial outputs of anaerobic digestion are the solid and liquid by-products that contain nutrients such as nitrogen. After they are processed through composting or “curing,” these by-products can be used to help feed the soil.

Disposal at landfills and incineration

This is where we start getting into the pathways we really want to avoid for food waste. It’s estimated that nearly a quarter of the material that ends up in landfills and municipal incinerators is food. Landfills are the third-largest source of human-generated methane, a gas that contributes to climate change—and more than half of the methane emissions tied to these facilities comes from rotting food.

From discarded crops to overstocked restaurants to those fuzzy berries at the back of your fridge, food waste comes from every stage of the supply chain. The majority of food—nearly 70 percent, according to the nonprofit ReFED—is wasted in our homes and at consumer-facing businesses. 

Farms

Starting at the beginning of the supply chain, farms are responsible for about 17 percent of all food waste. Many farmers grow a surplus to offset any unexpected weather that might cause price shocks and to avoid possible food shortages, but they may end up leaving these excess crops to wilt in fields when market prices are not enough to justify a harvest. Cosmetic standards trickling down from retailers can also prevent a large amount of crops from being moved onto the next stage of production. All this waste has serious consequences for the planet. Among them, cropland is increasingly overtaking ecologically important wild places, like grasslands, wetlands, and forests—even as we already grow enough food to feed our entire population.

Manufacturers and processors

A lot happens in the manufacturing process. Fresh produce needs to be washed, cut, and sorted. Processed foods need to be prepared and packaged. And everything then needs to be distributed to the consumer-facing businesses, like grocery stores and restaurants. In sum, manufacturing accounts for around 15 percent of food waste.

Food Retail & Food Services

Bananas with brown spots, egg cartons stamped with looming dates…overly strict standards for freshness are to blame for much of the waste in this next stage. All told, food service businesses account for 20 percent of the total problem. Shoppers are always looking for the perfect tomatoes and the newest carton of milk on the shelf. Retailers enable these preferences by constantly swapping out older stock, even if the food isn’t necessarily past its prime. Businesses also compete for the largest and most varied selection of produce and packaged goods year-round. This sets up a challenging inventory to manage (plus unrealistic customer expectations for what’s “in season”) and can lead to unwarranted waste when a product that sold well one week starts withering the next. 

Restaurants face a similar pressure of catering to their diners’ diverse and changing tastes. However, 70 percent of waste at restaurants comes from what customers don’t finish (or carry back home). Sometimes this plate waste stems from too-large portion sizes; other times, it’s a consequence of all-you-can-eat buffets (a particular problem in college dining halls). 

Homes

Finally, the largest source of food waste—sitting at 48 percent, a whopping 42.8 million tons of food a year—is right in our homes. To break this down further: The average American throws away close to 257 pounds of food at home annually. A few major factors drive this.

• Food storage foibles: Properly storing food is an art—one that takes time to master. Few people know that celery does best standing in a glass of water, or that apples and bananas, for example, give off ethylene that can make other produce in a countertop fruit bowl ripen very quickly. 
• Lack of planning: Meal planning—particularly when it involves cooking for a crowd, as during the holidays—is another challenge. And on any given week in the supermarket, we often buy more than we need by not factoring in accurate portion sizes, how many days we’ll be dining out, or how many servings of leftovers we’ll realistically work our way through. Fortunately, NRDC’s Guestimator tool can come to your rescue to help with accurately estimating how much food you’ll need for your shindig. 

• Misinterpreting “expiration” dates: Confusion over how to interpret date labels can lead consumers to prematurely toss out items that are still perfectly edible. Such misunderstandings account for 20 percent of all food waste, as people decode the federally unregulated labels of “sell by,” ”best by,” ”use by,” and ”best before” dates to uniformly mean “throw out by.” In fact, manufacturers generally use these labels to communicate a guarantee of peak freshness, not an expiration date.

Many of us feel a pang of guilt when we toss away food we neglected to eat in time—but why exactly is food waste a problem? Not only does it deplete precious resources but it can also impact our climate, and even our health.

Wasted resources

When food goes to waste, all of the resources that went into producing the food are also wasted. 

• Water and energy: Wasted food in the United States consumes 5.9 trillion gallons of freshwater and 664 billion kilowatt-hours of power every year, equivalent to what is consumed by 50 million homes across the country annually. With more and more parts of the country experiencing water shortages due to population growth and climate change, we can hardly afford to tend thirsty crops we won’t use.
• Land: Around 140 million acres of land are used every year to produce food that is eventually lost or discarded—a span the size of California and New York combined. The impacts of this waste ripple far and wide. A 2019 United Nations climate change report found that our use of land (for agriculture and other purposes) had already caused up to a 14 percent drop in biodiversity, playing a major role in driving the global extinction crisis.
• Pesticides and fertilizers: 778 million pounds of pesticides and 14 billion pounds of fertilizer are applied to wasted food every year. The resulting runoff can lead to soil and water quality degradation, impacting nearby communities and ecosystems. And of course, these fossil fuel–based and synthetic chemicals are energy intensive and toxic just to produce. 

Climate impacts 

According to the EPA, across the entire supply chain, wasted food in the United States creates annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are equivalent to the impact of 50 million gas-powered cars. That’s about 6 percent of all GHG emissions in the United States—or 170 million metric tons—attributed to the energy used for production, transportation, storage, and disposal of all the food we don’t eat. Rotting food in landfills is also a major source of the methane, the second-most-dangerous climate pollutant, going into our atmosphere.

United Nations scientists have calculated that if food wasted around the globe were a country, it would have the third-highest climate footprint on the planet behind only China and the United States. It’s why they also say that cutting food waste must be a central strategy of climate action.

Public health and environmental justice

Air quality also suffers when we send food to landfills and incinerators. Incinerators emit toxic chemicals like lead, mercury, and formaldehyde as well as nitrous oxide, all linked to numerous health impacts. In fact, studies have found that proximity to waste incinerators may increase risks of cancers, birth defects, and miscarriages. Municipal incinerators and landfills also exacerbate environmental injustice: Nearly 80 percent of them are located in lower-income communities, where they disproportionately affect communities of color.

Nearly a decade ago, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a national goal to reduce food loss and waste by 50 percent by 2030, and advocates like the Zero Food Waste Coalition, which NRDC cofounded, continue to press for this target. This goal aligns with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, which aims to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses” by the same year. To get there, every stage of the supply chain must make big changes now.

Preventing waste on farms 

A wide variety of factors, including market pricing, labor costs, and strict standards set by retailers impact the decision-making for harvesting produce. At this stage, prevention is key. Farmers who overplant run the risk of generating more than they can harvest or sell. Cutting down on this waste requires close collaboration between farms, manufacturers, and retailers. 

One of the practices suggested by both the EPA and ReFED is whole crop purchase, where instead of specifying an amount, manufacturers agree to accept the whole batch of produce, even if some of it is misshapen or blemished, etc. Along the same lines, partial order acceptance aims to reduce the amount of discarded food from farms while also ensuring the usual quality controls are met. By adjusting standards in these and other ways, more food moves off the field and into the processing line. 

Other pathways to minimizing waste include improving storage technology at farms and gleaning, whereby farmers establish partnerships with organizations like soup kitchens and food banks to donate leftover produce. Adapting our food supply to climate change—particularly in light of the impacts to cropland from increasing flooding, drought, and other extreme weather events—also assures less waste at ground level. 

Holding retailers accountable

Retailers hold a key position, as they can influence the amount of waste both before and after the food reaches them in the supply chain. To start, they set—and therefore, can relax—the cosmetic standards that directly impact the harvesting and manufacturing stages. (This also requires a shift in consumer mindset toward foods that appear imperfect.)

Dynamic pricing for perishable produce can help move more products off the shelves. For example, when stores see a batch of produce soon to be past its prime, offering a discount can entice customers to purchase it. Planning for when certain products will be in higher or lower demand can also help retailers better manage inventory. And as with farms, establishing donation partnerships for surplus food is critical. Whatever can be rescued and redistributed must help meet the urgent food needs of local community members. 

Changing consumer habits 

Since consumers are the biggest source of food waste, it will take ongoing public outreach to fill in the knowledge gap about food waste prevention and build new habits. Educational institutions such as universities, for example, can work to draw attention to plate waste and encourage students to take right-sized portions. (Elementary schools can also strive to lengthen lunch periods to allow their students more time to eat what’s served.) Cities and towns can publicize food scrap recycling opportunities and educate residents on the scale of the problem. 

As individuals, we can all inspect our own purchasing behaviors to reduce what we toss, in addition to making changes around the kitchen to lengthen the lifespan of our food. NRDC’s Save the Food public education initiative aims to teach consumers about food management at home to avoid waste. Some of our areas of focus include food storage, recipes for using up all parts of a food, and meal prepping.

Federal and state initiatives 

Recently, federal policymakers have made some significant strides in helping to get food waste under control. Most recently, the White House released a first-ever national strategy to help the United States meet its goal to cut food waste by half by 2030; tactics include educational and behavioral change campaigns. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, provide $5 billion to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to develop and implement climate action plans that reduce GHG emissions; several states and cities have opted to include food waste reduction within their strategies. In September 2023, the EPA issued a $100 million grant through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand recycling infrastructure and waste management. This included $44 million to specifically support projects that prevent and recycle wasted food. And in January 2024, the USDA allocated $11.5 million to implement composting and food waste reduction projects across 23 states. 

State lawmakers have also rolled out a variety of programs and policies to address food waste. Maryland’s House Bill 264 requires producers of more than two tons of food waste per week to divert their food waste from landfill disposal, joining California, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and others, which all have similar restrictions. Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality is educating and engaging with households about reducing waste, including increasing outreach to Spanish-speaking communities. California introduced a bill in 2023 that will standardize and clarify date labels on food. 

City initiatives

City officials across the departments responsible for waste management, land use, and local health and food regulations are also increasingly focused on cutting food waste. NRDC’s Food Matters’s Initiative has partnered with Baltimore, Denver, Nashville, and other cities to devise policies and programs that help scale up food waste prevention, surplus food rescue, and food scrap recycling operations and initiatives. The solutions take into account what strategies may be most feasible and effective in different communities. They include everything from establishing food scrap drop-offs at neighborhood farmers’ markets to helping local governments shape ambitious zero-waste plans to teaching restaurants how to cut waste in the kitchen and participate in food donation programs. And cities are reaping the benefits of these efforts. Not only are they cutting down on the harmful environmental impacts of food waste, but they are also lowering sanitation costs, addressing community food gaps, and improving local well-being in other ways too.

It's a bitter paradox that millions of American households face food insecurity at some point in the year, given the immensity that we waste. Those advocating to solve our food crisis show us it doesn’t have to be this way.