By Susan Williams | Director, Development
Everything we produce has a climate impact at every stage of its life cycle, including production, transportation, and disposal. While recycling and composting are important, preventing waste from occurring in the first place does much more to curb climate change. In the case of food, for example, significant amounts of greenhouse gases are produced from wasted food—food that was produced and perhaps even transported to supermarket and then home or restaurant, but not eaten. And part of those emissions are methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.
Those climate implications are a reason why both the United States and the United Nations have goals of reducing food waste and loss by 50 percent by 2030. Achieving this goal would have huge climate benefits. It would also help create jobs and, most importantly, feed people who are food insecure.
The implications of the waste-climate connection for policymakers were discussed through EESI’s briefing series: Reduce and Reuse: How to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Building Materials, Plastics, and Food, which you helped make possible. That series highlighted, for example, the ReFED Insights Engine, a tool for policymakers seeking to reduce food waste.
Of course, individuals can—and should—do their best to avoid wasting food. Food makes up the largest share of materials deposited in landfills, with a lot coming from households.
But this is a huge, deeply-rooted societal issue that individuals cannot solve on their own. We need policy interventions to achieve impact on a massive scale—at every stage in the food production and consumption cycle.
It takes so much energy to create and distribute food and other products that people buy. Diverting them from landfills will not diminish the climate impacts much. Waste prevention is a much more effective climate strategy.
Thank you so much for the important role you are playing in ensuring that federal decision makers have all the information they need to enact effective and well-informed policies!
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