Food waste prevention roadmap factors in water savings
Food waste is a critical problem affecting business, communities, the environment and water scarcity worldwide, but the problem is particularly acute in the United States, according to a report from ReFED.
ReFED is a group of businesses, nonprofits, foundations, and government leaders committed to reducing food waste. It was formed in early 2015 to create a Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste, the first national action plan on the subject.
The U.S. currently spends more than $218 billion — roughly 1.3 percent of its GDP — in the growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten. ReFED estimates 10.1 million tons of food is wasted before harvest, and that 52.4 million tons of food is sent to landfills each year. This is about 63 million tons of waste.
Worldwide Food Waste
In 2009-10, the amount of food wasted worldwide was 2.3 billion tons, equal to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crops, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, Regional Office of North America. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of food is wasted, and organic waste is the second greatest constituent in landfills.
Some policies addressing food waste already have been established:
- The European Parliament passed a resolution to halve food waste in the European Union by 2025.
- In 2015, the U.S. government declared a similar national 50% food waste reduction goal by 2030.
- World leaders meeting at the United Nations agreed on the need to halve per-capita food waste in the consumer and retail sectors and reduce food losses along production and supply chains by 2030 as part of the Global Sustainable Development Goals.
27 Approaches to Reducing Food Waste
ReFED analysts identified 27 approaches with the potential to reduce food waste in the U.S. by 20 percent by 2026. These “cost-effective, feasible, and scalable solutions” could divert 13 million tons of food from landfills. One of the solutions is increasing investment in recycling infrastructure, including about $3 billion for compost and anaerobic digestion processing and collection.
Benefits of implementing the approaches could include the generation of 15,000 new jobs, increased food donations to nonprofits — the equivalent of 1.8 billion meals per year — the reduction of freshwater use by up to 1.5 percent, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
U.S. Food Waste
Although some regions and cities are successfully implementing food waste prevention programs, the U.S. still lacks a national comprehensive action plan. For example, the success of waste-to-energy projects in the U.S. has been mixed, with some anaerobic digestion projects delayed or sidetracked by legal issues, as is the case with a project in Maine.
One estimate said that if half of the food waste generated in the U.S. were treated using anaerobic digestion, it would generate enough electricity to power more than 2.5 million homes for a year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And a University of Texas study found that if food waste were ended, the U.S. alone could save roughly 2 percent of its total energy consumption in a single year. Michael Webber, the assistant professor leading the study, estimates that this equals saving 350 million barrels of oil, or roughly twice the annual energy consumption of Switzerland.
ReFED Proposals
In ReFED’s analysis, standardized date labeling, consumer education, and packaging adjustments were found to have the greatest economic value per ton for combatting food waste. The solutions with the greatest diversion potential were identified as centralized composting, centralized anaerobic digestion and Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) with anaerobic digestion.
The study found that centralized anaerobic digestion could be expanded in 10 large municipal areas with high disposal fees and energy prices. These include the New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., areas.
There is great potential for Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) with AD across all 30 metropolitan statistical areas reviewed in the study. Centralized anaerobic digestion has the third greatest potential for jobs creation. For each 10,000 tons of anaerobic digestion capacity, four to six jobs are created; however, there are also many job possibilities in post-processing as well, notes the analysis
The study found that money is one particular factor that could help propel municipal anaerobic digestion. This type of project reputedly is “most sensitive to variation in financing rates, which can be a differentiator for success.” Like energy projects, those with compost or animal feed as an end product would benefit from product off-take agreements. The report notes:
If 10% of all AD project capital could be supplied in the form of grants or low-interest loans, whether from federal and state programs or impact investors, up to 2 million tons of additional diversion could be achieved through these facilities.
Other drivers that could spur action include creating mandates for renewable energy that could encourage long term-contractual agreements for projects; government funding of projects; adding investment funds from foundations or other stakeholders such as the Closed Loop Fund, which provides 0% financing to cities and low-cost debt for hard-to-finance municipal solid waste recycling projects.
The roadmap document covers many other challenges and solutions for each of these, backed with data and ideas to help organizations move forward on projects.
The report, as well as other information and resources related to eliminating food waste, is available from ReFED.
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