US promised to halve food waste – we’re not close

In September 2015, the United States set an ambitious goal of reducing food loss and waste by 50 percent. The idea was to reduce the amount of food that falls into landfills where it is separated greenhouse gases As it decomposes, a major factor contributing to climate change.

Researchers at the University of California in Davis have examined the state policies across the country and evaluated how much food waste will probably reduce each state in 2022. They found that without more work at the federal level, no state was about to achieve a national Waste reduction naked.

Researchers have estimated that even when taking into account reduction measures, the US still generates about 328 pounds of food waste per year – which is also the amount of waste generated per person in 2016, shortly after the EPA and the US Department of Agriculture The goal of reducing waste.

These figures show that even our best waste elimination strategies are not enough to achieve our goals, said Sarah Kakadis, a lead author of the study published in Nature This month.

To evaluate how the United States is doing it to achieve their goals to reduce food waste, Cakadis and its team used both publicly available data (from Refed, a non -profit organization that Observes food waste in the United States) and evaluations based on the current political landscape.

The findings of the study “Not surprising”, given the lack of federal policy that regulates food waste, said Lori Leonard, chairman of the Global Development Division at Cornell University. “People are trying to do what they can at the state and municipal level,” she said. “But we really need national leadership on this.”

Cacadis suggests that the path forward will also require a change in the way consumers think of certain waste management strategies – such as composting.

Composting makes the organic material, such as food residues into a nutrient -rich mixture that can be used to fertilize new plants and crops. It can be considered a form of “recycling” of food, although the final product cannot be eaten technically. This important detail means that consumers need to learn how to look at composting, despite the potential environmental benefits, such as food waste, Cakadis says.

“You really think about the best use of the food you are to eat it,” she said.

Although it is advertised as a great alternative to the disposal of your moldy bananas in the garbage, composting is indeed classified as a form of UN food waste and the European Union. In 2021, the EPA updated its food waste definition to include composting and anaerobic digestion – both can take input substances as unused food and turn them into fertilizer or biogas respectively.

When updating its directions, the EPA publishes a hierarchy of food waste – which shows that the best way to reduce food waste is to prevent them. This includes things like adding accurate labels with a date to food so that users do not go wrong when something they have purchased has fallen apart or is no longer safe to consume. It is also preferable to find another application of unsold or unintended food – such as donating it to food banks or integrating it into the animal food where it can be used to raise livestock (assuming the livestock will ultimately feed and people).

Composting will always play a role in diverting food waste from landfills – because these operations can take spoiled or spoiled food that food banks, for example, cannot. “This is not or/or. They have to go hand in hand, “Cakadis said. “But we miss all these other steps and go straight to recycling too often.”

Leonard agrees, emphasizing the high costs associated with ensuring the smooth functioning of the stretched, complex nutritional system of the nation: from the farm where the harvest, to the trucks and refrigeration warehouses that process packaged goods. “There is a huge amount of energy that is embedded in the production of this food,” she said. “We don’t do this to create compost. You know, we do this to feed people.

Composting, of course, serves more than one goal and has environmental benefits in addition to reducing food loss and waste. For example, it fills the soil. But Leonard notes that if more work is done on the part of prevention – to ensure that farms do not produce over -food – then the soils will not be so exhausted first and will not need so much recovery.

Both Leonard and Cakadelis emphasize that no tool to avoid sending food to landfills should be removed. Leonard, who previously worked with the Department of Environmental Protection in New York, has once conducted a study on organic products in other states.

“I asked them if they were encouraging business or households to rise in the EPA hierarchy and find other, better applications for food residues? And they said, no, no. What we are really trying to do is just make people do everything in the hierarchy. This includes composting.

As long as there are no more food waste opportunities before and after consumption, composting can be the best and most affordable option for many people. “This is the easiest thing,” Leonard said. “And it is probably the safest thing until we have better protocols.”

This article originally appeared in Germination at https://grist.org/food-and-agruCulture/the-us-wants-cut-food-waste-in-half-were- not- even-close/S GRIST is an independent non -profit media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate decisions and a fair future. Learn more of Grist.org