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Now, the story.
What if we could slash a huge chunk of global emissions without changing what we eat, how we travel, or even where we get our electricity? In fact, we wouldn’t even have to leave our home.
All we have to do is stop wasting food.
“Increasingly people have recognized household food waste is responsible for the majority of food loss and waste in industrialized countries,” Stacy Blondin, a behavioral science associate at World Resources Institute, told me. “Throwing out a slice of pizza is just you making a small action, but in reality it all adds up to a huge impact.”
Globally, we lose or waste up to 40% of food every year. And when this food makes it into landfills instead of our stomachs, it rots and releases methane — a greenhouse gas that traps much more heat than CO2.
Fortunately, because so much food waste happens right in your home, food waste is also something we can control. Project Drawdown ranks reducing food waste as the top solution to combatting global warming. Plus, it takes a lot less effort (and money) than other green actions, like switching to electric vehicles or installing solar panels.
Then why aren’t more people doing it?
The problem is partially that food waste is way more socially acceptable than other environmental no-nos.
While littering or throwing a plastic bottle in a trash bin is social suicide (okay, maybe that’s a bit exaggerated), food waste tends to get a free pass, even though it’s a way more effective climate solution than cleaning up a park or recycling.
Clearly, something needs to change.
That’s why Blondin recently led a couple studies on how to use messaging to make food waste socially unacceptable:
In one trial, researchers delivered education materials on reducing food waste directly to residents in Washington, D.C.
In the other, they used messages on social media to influence food waste behavior among people in the United Kingdom and Germany.
Her findings suggest that the right messages can raise the importance of food waste in people’s lives — and possibly reduce food waste. In the D.C. trial, for example, the group that didn’t receive messaging wasted 25% more food over the course of the study; the group that received messaging saw no change.
“Social norms messaging definitely has a role to play in changing or shaping consumers' knowledge, attitudes, or behavior around household food waste,” Blondin said. “But it’s not a panacea for flipping household food waste on its head or putting an end to the problem, so we clearly need solutions working in combination with social norms messaging.”
That’s where structural changes come in. A paper published in 2020 puts part of the responsibility for food waste on food venues.
For example, groceries can provide smaller carts or baskets to limit overbuying, cafeterias can get rid of trays so people choose less food, and restaurants can offer smaller portions to discourage waste.
Governments also have a role to play. In 2020, Vermont banned throwing food scraps in the trash. According to the state’s natural resources agency, food donation has nearly tripled since then.
But reducing food waste is just that: It’s finding ways to plan out what you eat or limit the amount of food coming into your house, so you stop throwing away so much food. It’s not a reason to compost more.
That’s because composting can increase our food waste by giving us an out, whereas simply eating the food would have been better for the Planet.
Like so many climate problems, food waste is combination of individual actions and larger structural forces (I’m looking at you, supply chains).
But unlike other climate problems that require costly solutions, some simple fixes are right in front of us. Short term, it takes is a little planning. Long term, it’s a change in how we think about food waste to begin with.