Editorial: September 21, 2023

It’s a Smelly Mess

There are a lot of problems in this world, some big and some not so big. One of the big, really big, problems we as a country and as a world have is food waste. We can’t seem to be able either to make good use of the immeasurable amount of uneaten food we produce, or to dispose of it in an intelligent, green and helpful way.

While the world wastes about two and a half billion tons of food every year, we in the United States throw out more food than any other country, nearly 60 million tons—120 billion pounds—every year. Households are the largest contributor to our food waste problem, responsible for nearly half the total surplus, while produce farms account for 17 percent, manufacturing is responsible for almost 15 percent, foodservice 14 percent and retail 6 percent. Astonishingly, that amount is estimated to be almost 40 percent of the entire U.S. food supply. It’s also 325 pounds of waste per person. And the numbers are increasing. Sadly, most of this food waste goes straight into our landfills, making food, in all of its guises, the largest component taking up space in our ghastly overfull mountains of trash. It is also a major emissions culprit, generating about 8 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gases and needlessly wasting the water and energy it took to produce it in the first place. The amount of food wasted here in this country has an approximate value of $218 billion, the equivalent of 130 billion meals. That is pretty shocking, and the sooner we can do something about this travesty, the better.

Close to 35 million people in this country, 10 million of whom are children, suffer from food insecurity and are in serious need of basic amounts of nourishment. Why do we waste what all these people can use? It is a complex problem, bigger than big, that amounts in good part to socioeconomic disparities, confusion, ingrained beliefs and habits. More than 80 percent of Americans chuck good, consumable food because they misunderstand expiration labels—sell by; use by; best before; best by—and they are afraid of a food-borne illness. We also tend to buy more food than we can eat, store it imperfectly so it doesn’t keep well, and throw out the leftovers, which could easily make another meal or at the very least be contributed to a compost. The average family of four spends $1,500.00 each year on food that is uneaten.

On the bright side, a number of states are beginning to curb food waste and recover unwanted and unconsumed good food. California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont have passed laws that restrict the amount of food waste headed for the landfills, and there is pending legislation in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts that would establish private-sector programs for composting and organic food collection. The Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency set a nation-wide goal, in 2015, of reducing food waste by half by 2030, although unfortunately the amount of food waste has since increased.

Here, in our village, we are fortunate to have Cooperstown Composting, which has provided a composting service at the Cooperstown Farmers’ Market since 2022, wherein anyone can bring compostable food to the supplied compost containers. The vendors use these containers as well.
Cooperstown Composting diverted 2,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill in 2022. Thank you.