While working at Roche Brothers over the summer, a kitchen staff member told me that one supermarket generates food waste equivalent to the weight of a whale. This wasn’t very specific. It turns out that supermarkets in the United States generated approximately 43 billion pounds of food waste in 2008. Holding size constant, each grocery store generated 1.7 million pounds of food waste per store that year or the equivalent to approximately 45 24-foot cargo trucks. This is just in the United States!

Food waste is an environmental and humanitarian concern. Global food waste poses a major threat to all things living on this planet. Every year, approximately one third of food produced globally or 1.6 billion tons is lost or wasted. Food wasted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe each year could adequately feed the approximately 800 million people worldwide left starving each and every day.

Global food waste has extensive adverse effects. It accounts for almost ten percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Decomposing food releases a greenhouse gas known as methane and when food is wasted, so are all the resources and energy that went into the production of that food in the first place.

Over the last decade, the media and non-profits named consumers as the culprit for the majority of the food waste in the United States. Consumers are not the only ones at fault.  However, the media has turned its attention to food retailers and other actors along the supply chain as the cause and the solution to our global food waste problem. Food retailers have the ability to influence every part of the supply chain. Supermarkets are in a position to be a catalyst for change. However, despite their powerful position, they are doing the bare minimum, if that, to reduce their food waste.

There is some hope. Recently, a report came out that graded supermarkets in the United States based on what they are doing to reduce their food waste. Out of ten of the major supermarkets in the US, Walmart scored the highest and it has committed to achieve zero waste by 2025. Some of the ways Walmart plans to tackle food waste are by donating unsold food to local food banks and recovering inedible food through animal feed, composting, and anaerobic digestions.

Throughout the semester, I will examine the food system and the unique position supermarkets are in to put an end to food waste. I will also research food waste’s effect on climate change and other environmental and humanitarian concerns.

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