All About Food Waste

Morgan Vincent

Welcome to Educators Empowering Educators! I’m Morgan Vincent, and I’m joined by Dr. Marcus Ellery. Dr. Ellery, I have to say, this topic, food waste, is one that honestly makes my stomach turn a little bit. This is especially true since my time in Uganda, where so many kids are malnourished. I hate throwing any food away, but I can only imagine how much happens in the U.S. alone.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

The numbers are huge! Up to 40% of all food in the U.S. goes unsold or uneaten every year. That’s more than $400 billion lost annually, and it’s enough food, calorie-wise, to feed every person who’s food insecure in this country multiple times over.

Morgan Vincent

It’s staggering, Dr. Ellery. Now I might really get sick thinking about it.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

But it’s not just about money, it’s also about wasted resources and harming our planet. When we toss out food, we’re also throwing away all the water, land, and energy used to grow, harvest, and transport it. In America, just the food waste we send to landfills each year creates the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 50 million cars on the road.

Morgan Vincent

As a chemist, naturally I need to know which gas we are talking about here.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Well, unfortunately it is methane.

Morgan Vincent

Methane? That is a greenhouse gas that’s 100-times more warming potential than carbon dioxide. So it’s not just bad for our wallets, it’s fueling climate change too. And I am sure that we can add on inequality.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

In richer countries like the U.S., most of the waste is happening at the two ends of the supply chain: at the beginning, there’s waste on farms and, at the end, there’s waste in stores and at home. In lower-income countries, more food is lost in the middle of the supply chain, from post-harvest period up to retail. For example, in South Asia, it’s often about lack of infrastructure. Half of all cauliflower grown there is lost because there’s just not enough cold storage.

Morgan Vincent

That seems like a really important distinction. I could assume that here in the U.S., the abundance and especially our habits play a much bigger role.

Morgan Vincent

So, let’s break that down a bit more. The environmental protection agency, the EPA, has a definition of food waste that is pretty broad. It covers uneaten or spoiled food but also all those trims and scraps, like peels and bones, that we don’t eat as-is but could still repurpose. So it’s not just what’s left on your plate.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Exactly. Food loss and waste happens at each step along the supply chain, but in the U.S., the breakdown is roughly: about 33% on farms, 15% in processing and manufacturing, 20% at retail or in food service, and the biggest chunk, about 30-40%, is in households. So most waste happens at the farm-level, and then when food’s made it all the way to stores or our kitchens.

Morgan Vincent

So it seems that here, we really have lost a sense of food’s value, don’t you think?

Dr. Marcus Ellery

But managing food waste at the household-level, in our kitchens, takes time and effort. So, on one hand, reducing food waste is hard because it requires us to change our habits. However, on the other hand, it also means that individuals and families have real power to make a difference.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Next I want to dive into why food is wasted. Some of it starts from big-picture issues: farmers overproduce to protect themselves against crop losses. They also respond to strict “cosmetic” standards set by the fruit and vegetable industry with retailers and consumers in mind. If a carrot’s bent or an apple’s spotted, it may never make it to a shelf. Then there’s a ton of confusion around date labeling. The 'sell by,' 'best by,' 'use by' tags that nearly everything in our stores have. Very few of these date labels actually signal food safety, but people toss food just in case. So, it’s a mix of marketing, policy, and psychology.

Morgan Vincent

Right! I heard that date label confusion causes about 20% of household food waste. Remember, very few products have an actual expiration date that signals food safety. The sell-by and use-by labels, at best, signal food quality and taste. Personally, I tend to eat things after the sell-by date as long as I don't notice mold, stale smell, or anything funky.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Ha, you’re not alone! This is one way that people can start to make an impact. We don't want to make ourselves sick, but we can certainly use our own judgement! But it’s not just labels. At home, it’s often just not storing food properly, not planning meals or portion sizes that match what we’ll actually eat or the size of our family, and of course leftovers that get lost in the fridge.

Morgan Vincent

My household is now pretty attuned to food waste, so we are really trying to re-use leftover food and not forget about stuff in the back of the fridge.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

But there are positives, and basic interventions can have a big effect.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Beyond just being wasteful, all this food that ends up trashed brings a huge environmental footprint. Each year, about 140 million acres of farmland, imagine California plus New York, is all being used to grow food that we just throw away. Along with that comes water, fertilizer, pesticides, all used for nothing.

Morgan Vincent

That scale is honestly overwhelming. And then all that food ends up decomposing in landfills, releasing methane, which again, is a super-potent greenhouse gas. I read that if global food waste were its own country, it would rank third, right behind China and the U.S., in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Exactly. And despite this abundance, food insecurity is a fact for over one in eight Americans.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

That is almost 13%! I am sure all of us know fellow Americans that are dealing with food insecurity, our neighbors, friends, and co-workers, but we might not even realize it.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Yes! And the sad part of that is that the places that deal most with landfill emissions or incinerators are typically lower-income communities and communities of color. So, food waste is not only an environmental problem, but a social justice one as well.

Morgan Vincent

This all feels rather depressing. What are we doing about this ridiculous food waste problem?

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Well, one thing we can do is change policy. California has been a leader here with Senate Bill 1383, a relatively new state law that has two big goals: divert 75% of organic waste, including food, from landfills, and recover at least 20% of edible food for redistribution by 2025. That means stores, wholesalers, and big food service operations, are required to donate usable food before it ends up trashed. But implementation isn’t easy. There are funding gaps and logistical headaches that have prevented this goal from being fully in place, especially for rural areas.

Morgan Vincent

And California’s just one state. Are we seeing similar progress elsewhere in the U.S.? Or is this still the exception rather than the rule?

Dr. Marcus Ellery

A few states are catching up, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York, all have organics-diversion laws. But the patchwork approach makes it tricky. We don’t yet have a consistent federal mandate or the infrastructure for national coordination. That’s where partnerships among schools, municipalities, and local food banks really matter.

Morgan Vincent

So, how does the U.S. stack up globally? I know we’ve set a national goal to cut food waste in half by 2030, in line with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. But reading the latest reports, it sounds like progress is uneven and there’s just not enough money behind these efforts.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Some countries like France, Italy, and South Korea are ahead in both legislation and culture. South Korea, for instance, collects food waste separately and recycles it into animal feed and biogas. Europe’s been investing in public education campaigns for years, while here, food waste still hides in the background of bigger climate conversations.

Morgan Vincent

Wow. It sounds like the United States has some catching up to do.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Yes, but I think this is a good place for schools to come in. Schools have an opportunity to build food waste literacy right into the curriculum. We can get students to not only understand the issue, but to track waste, brainstorm solutions, and bring those ideas home.

Morgan Vincent

And this is one of the hopes of our E 3 program. I think that’s often the part people miss: education connects this global challenge to what’s happening right in their community. Once students start asking questions like “why are we throwing this away?” or “where could it go instead?”, it changes the mindset entirely.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Exactly. And that mindset shift is where real change starts. But when we zoom back out to policy, that’s where it gets tricky.

Morgan Vincent

Right, because even with good laws and local initiatives, the focus, and the funding, doesn’t always line up with the real needs.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

That’s exactly it. Policies like California’s focus more funding on waste diversion, composting, anaerobic digestion, than on the hard work of recovering good food and getting it to people. That especially puts rural and under-resourced areas at a disadvantage. There are a lot of food recovery organizations that would love to do more, but they lack cold storage, refrigerated trucks, or enough staff to handle big donations.

Morgan Vincent

And isn’t there this sort of paradox? We’re getting better at donating and composting, but if we don’t make bigger changes in how much food we grow, buy, and serve in the first place, we’re just managing surplus instead of fixing the source of the problem. I guess what I’m asking is, is it enough to just “rescue” food or turn it into compost?

Dr. Marcus Ellery

That’s right, Morgan. Donation and recycling are reactive. To really solve the problem, we need systemic change upstream, before the surplus is created. Otherwise, we’re just shifting waste from one bin to another. Prevention is still the top of the food recovery hierarchy for a reason.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Let’s get specific about solutions. First, on farms: whole-crop purchasing agreements. This is where buyers take the full batch, not just the picture-perfect pieces. This helps keep more crops from getting left in the fields. Retailers can relax cosmetic standards and use dynamic pricing, offering discounts on food before it spoils. And education on smart storage goes a long way at home.

Morgan Vincent

And I love how the United States EPA lays out the hierarchy: prevention first, then donation and upcycling, then animal feed, composting, and anaerobic digestion. Landfill and incineration are last resorts. We can all help prevent waste, but what about in schools, Dr. Ellery?

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Imagine a week-long “food rescue” curriculum: kids track their lunch waste, talk through what could be donated, composted, or used differently, and come up with ideas for their own families and communities. That hands-on approach is where change starts.

Morgan Vincent

That’s a hopeful note to end on. There’s so much work to do, but it’s clear that every step, from big policy shifts to how we pack our lunches, counts. Dr. Ellery, as always, thanks for making it real—and for helping us connect the science to the everyday.

Dr. Marcus Ellery

Thank you, Morgan—I learn something new every time. And thanks to all our listeners for joining us at Educators Empowering Educators. We’ll keep these conversations going. Until next time.