Tre americane | Food Waste in the U.S.A.

As mere American undergrad students, we already feel beyond willing to dive in and mitigate the food waste problem, even though we’ve only been in Italy for two months. You might wonder why it is that we care at all; the answer is that, as Americans, we know almost better than anyone how severe the problem is.

 

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SenzaSpreco USA version logo by Cat

Although both Italy and the U.S. face a food waste crisis, ours is arguably much larger, and perhaps this has much to do with the sheer abundance of food and beverage products. For instance, every time we go to our hometown’s local (and very large) supermarket, each of us may spend at least five minutes trying to decide which flavor of tea we’d like to try next. We can blame that not on our own indecisiveness, but on the vast array of brands and strange new flavors available to try. There isn’t just green tea; there’s also mango-infused green decaf tea, or strong ginger mint green tea, or five other kinds of green tea that are hard to even remember now. We Americans are accustomed to staggering variety and abundance in our food and beverage choices. Culturally, this often leads to our society feeling too comfortable wasting food with that same degree of abundance.

In the U.S. and worldwide, 40% of produced food goes uneaten. To put that in individual terms, that’s 20 pounds of food per person every month. Though the entire food supply chain in the U.S. is at fault, the majority of this waste takes place at both the production (a.k.a. farmer) level and the consumer (a.k.a. household) level. For example, in 2012, 20% of fruits and vegetables were wasted on the farmsite, and 28% were thrown out by consumers both in and out of their homes. These percentages at the consumer level increase in the case of seafood (33%) and are similar to the quantity of grain wasted (27%), and the combination of all three is troubling. It’s important to note that these statistics encompass food that could otherwise be consumed, and by reducing this percentage by 40%, we could put food on the table for another 15 million Americans per year. Long story short: we’ve got a ways to go.

Despite the United States’ massive issues with food waste, there are not many federal laws enacted to prevent waste. The main food waste prevention laws in the US merely encourage large food corporations and federal agencies to donate extra food to charity by minimizing liability, such as the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act of 1996 and Federal Food Donation Act of 2008. As an incentive, the Internal Revenue Code provides tax deductions to institutions that donate their spare food to charity. These laws gently encourage corporations and federal agencies to minimize their waste, but no U.S. legislation firmly enforces food waste prevention.

 

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) manage all other efforts to mitigate food waste. The EPA and USDA have recently made it their goal to reduce food waste in the US by one-half. In this case, food waste is defined as food going to landfills from residences, institutions, stores, and industrial sources, but not including food wasted from pre-production activities. The EPA reports that they will facilitate change by hosting conferences where leaders from different sectors of the food system can exchange ideas. They will also provide information to businesses and citizens about opportunities to join the movement.  Other than these general plans, the EPA and USDA have no detailed outline of how they will reduce food waste in the US.

Again, we are only students, and our sphere of influence is minuscule compared to the scale on which change needs to happen in the U.S. Even so, our hope is that Italy can serve as something of a paradigm for the changes America must make, and we can start on the path from there.

 

Cat Braza, Moriah Maternoski and Paige Anton

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