Taking Responsibility for Food Waste

Taking Responsibility for Food Waste

Our futures are in danger. The quality of our lives is at risk.  With the urgent issue of our world needing to become more sustainable as we continue to grow as a population, and as the state of the environment becomes increasingly more fragile, it is important to look at an issue that could play a big part in decreasing the environmental footprint on the world: food waste. The Food and Agriculture Organization defines food waste as “the decrease in the quantity or quality of food resulting from decisions and actions by retailers, food service providers and consumers” (“Technical Platform”). There are many factors that contribute to the environment, but food waste is one way to reduce the impact humans have.

More food is wasted than most people realize. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about a third of food produced is wasted (“Cutting Food Waste”).  Food waste is not cost efficient and wastes more valuable resources than just food. In a study done in Europe by ArkaitzUsubiaga and other authors in which they evaluated pressures of food production,they report that, “relative to the total footprint, the potential savings range between 3% for GHG emissions and 15% for blue water consumption” (Usubiaga). This is because the water used to grow the food was used without a purpose, and food in landfills emits greenhouse gases when it decomposes. According to Usibiaga’s study, reducing food waste could significantly lower the overall environmental footprint created. This could be an important step to helping the environment.

In order to truly cut down on food waste and work to end it, though, it is important to look at all aspects, from food being produced to it being in consumer’s homes.  However, blame for food waste is strongly placed on households. This could prevent responsibility being taken for all parts of the food system. Most importantly, it can prevent businesses from being held liable for the part they play.

Some people believe that most of the blame for food waste should be put on consumers.  It is true that a large portion of food waste occurs in households. As reported in a study about household food waste practices done by Karin Schanes, Karin Dobernig, and BurcuGozet, households have been identified as a large factor in how much food waste is produced in the world (Schanes).  In this study, it is observed that people buy more food than they need because of things like people in a family wanting different types of foods, then buying too many perishable foods that end up being thrown out.  Consumers also do not plan well enough before they go out to buy groceries.  Consumers making better decisions could play a huge role in ending food waste, and it could also save money for them. Consumers need to find ways to shop more efficiently so that they don’t buy food that they won’t eat.

Consumers are, however, influenced by the businesses they buy their food from.  A writer for Eat This, Not That explains many of the ways grocery stores convince consumers to buy more than what they originally came to the store for, including putting impulse items near the register, putting essential items in the back of the store so that consumers have to walk by other food items in order to get what they need, and putting the bakery items and flowers near the front of the store so that people feel hungrier and end up buying more food. (Hussein).  In this way, consumers almost can’t help buying more than they need, as they are persuaded to do this by the stores they shop at.  This makes it very difficult to end food waste at the household level.

Another factor that causes businesses to contribute to food waste is throwing out food due to physical imperfections or packaging defects. There are often standards as to how food (especially produce) should look, and when it doesn’t meet those standards, it doesn’t get sold.  In an article for a non-profit called Sustainable America, the author makes it known how people who harvest produce are trained to not even pick it if it is not up to a certain cosmetic standard, as it would be hard to sell it to grocery stores (Rogers).  This is usually perfectly good produce that people could still eat.  Although imperfect produce may not be somebody’s first choice when placed next to “normal”-looking produce, by marking down the prices on the imperfect produce businesses could end up selling more while at the same time saving that food from being wasted.

There is also a problem with supermarkets sell by dates.  Sell-by dates are not regulated and are almost based on a system of guessing.  Food can often last much longer than what the sell by date says.  In an article by National Geographic writer Jonathan Bloom, he mentions a recent report that found if sell by dates were standardized, it is possible that we could prevent 8 million pounds of food annually from being thrown out earlier than it really needed to (Bloom).  If businesses worked to make sell by dates easier to understand for consumers, that would be another thing that would cause households to produce less food waste.  Some stores, such as Walmart, have already started to do this.  In an interview done by MenakaWilhem with solid waste specialist Jordan Figueiredo, he comments, “Walmart has worked to standardize its expiration labels into two categories: “Best if Used By” for nonperishable products, and “Use By” for food that can spoil” (Wilhelm). This works well because it makes it clear to consumers that their food is still okay to eat even if used after a “Best if Used By” date, and makes it easier to decipher when perishable products actually are actually unsafe to eat.  Although Walmart has begun to do this, many other grocery stores have yet to follow their lead.

Grocery stores also often have to throw food away themselves because they don’t sell it before the sell by date.  This is problematic, because there isn’t much businesses can do with the food beyond this point.  They often don’t donate it because of a few reasons. Business Insider writer Harrison Jacobs claims businesses often don’t donate food because of liability issues, such as not wanting to be held responsible if somebody gets sick from the food.  There are also problems with not having any storage space to hold food they would donate (Jacobs).  This is not ok when there is so much food that grocery stores get rid of.  As reported by the Food Marketing Institute, supermarkets carry 33,055 items on average (“Supermarket Facts”).  Even if a large percentage of the stock gets sold, that is still plenty that is bound to end up in the trash.  Businesses should work to stop buying more than they can sell.  Maybe they will not be as much of a profit, but there will also be money saved if they don’t have so much food that they don’t end up selling.

It has also been noticed that the size of packaging that food in grocery stores comes in can also contribute to food wasted.  As explained by Karin Schanes and other authors in their study, prepackaged food comes in larger packages than people in households can finish before it goes bad.  The food in smaller or no packaging is often more expensive (Schanes).  When stores do this, people end up buying the cheaper option.  This is another example of how businesses encourage consumers to buy more than they need to.  Grocery stores should work to not be selling food in packaging so large that it is difficult for a family to finish.  They also should work to make more affordable options available that don’t involve larger quantities of food.

The way grocery stores are currently set up, it is encouraged that people only go shopping once or twice a week, and they buy a bulk of their groceries on that day.   Grocery stores should work to encourage consumers to shop more frequently rather than buying too many groceries at one time.  One way stores could possibly do this would be to offer fresher options.  Grocery stores could also encourage consumers to come in more often by offering deals throughout the week.

While we hold grocery stores responsible for the part they play on food waste, there are other ways they can work to cut down on their general waste as well.  The use of plastic could be greatly reduced throughout the world if grocery stores implemented programs to stop the use of plastic shopping bags. Kate Gibson from CBS News acknowledges that some grocery stores have started to make the move in this direction by tax on plastic grocery bags (Gibson).  Some stores such as Whole Foods even reward their costumes for bringing reusable bags by offering small discounts.  Still, more grocery stores should be working to do this as well.  By encouraging reusable grocery bags, they could even save money because they won’t have to buy as many plastic bags.

Grocery stores can also work to have less products with plastic packaging.  There aren’t many alternatives for some products such as meat, but for other products there isn’t much of a need for plastic packaging.  There are several stores that have already begun to implement this.  As explained by science reporter XioZhi Lim, major retailers such as Walmart have a huge impact on what other grocery stores decide to do.  If these larger retailers worked to reduce plastic packaging, other businesses would follow suit (Lim). Although Walmart is doing more than some other stores when it comes to waste, major retailers could be leaders of change is they started to cut down on the amount of plastic packaging used on their products.

While it is true that consumers make their own choices and play their own part in producing food waste, I still insist that much of what they do produce could be cut down by businesses taking responsibility for the part they play.  There’s only so much that individuals can do to make even a small impact.  The real change starts when bigger businesses decide to make an effort to do something different.  This is where the world could begin to shift for the better.

It is clear that some grocery stores are already making the first steps to reduce their waste, but more can be done as well as more grocery stores joining in on the efforts. In the future, stores will hopefully shift to a model in which they need to reduce their waste in all aspects for consumers to even be interested in shopping there.  It may not seem like a huge deal, but it could be an important first step to tackle the food waste issue, as food waste is one step of many to solving our bigger environmental issues.

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