As with the rest of our garbage, Americans don’t think much about the food they throw away. But food waste in a landfill doesn’t just take up space, it’s a major source of methane, a significant contributor to climate change. And much of our wasted food is food that could have fed hungry people.
While it shouldn’t take an act of Congress to keep us from wasting so much food, legislation proposed last week by Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who represents southern Maine, will help by starting a conversation about ways to reduce food waste while also working to alleviate hunger.
At a news conference at the Portland Food Co-Op on Monday, Pingree said as much as 40 percent of food produced in the U.S. is wasted, including uneaten food at restaurants and in homes. The value of that wasted food, according to Pingree, is $161 billion per year — about $1,500 annually for an average family of four.
Her bill, the Food Recovery Act, includes measures to encourage schools, restaurants, retailers and other entities that handle large quantities of food to donate excess food to food banks and compost food scraps. The bill would expand tax deductions for food bank donations and extend liability protection to farmers and others entities that donate food. Grocery stores are already covered by the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. The legislation also includes financial support to help farmers more effectively store food they will donate.
In Maine, one in four children has insufficient access to nutritious food. The state ranks 12th in the nation in terms of food insecurity.
News this past week highlighted the challenge in encouraging food bank donations from large-scale donors. On Thursday, Shaw’s supermarket in Brunswick said it would stop donations to the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program because of a 2013 corporate policy against such donations. After speaking with Pingree, Shaw’s officials said the donations would continue in Brunswick. In Bangor, Manna Ministries received word Friday that Shaw’s would stop food donations to that organization, Executive Director Bill Rae said. A statement from Shaw’s Friday gave no reason for stopping its Fresh Rescue program. “We value our food bank partners in every area that we operate, and will continue to support them and other organizations via food drives and other charitable initiatives,” it said.
On Saturday, Pingree said she was told that Shaw’s would re-examine its policy on donating perishable food and would continue existing food donation arrangements, such as the ones in Bangor and Brunswick.
Grocery stores are a large source of fresh food, such as fruits, vegetables and milk, for hunger relief organizations. The Mid Coast Program received about 14 percent of its food — 100,000 pounds a year — from the Shaw’s store. Policies that encourage these partnerships are welcome — and logical.
Beyond the lost opportunity to help ease hunger, sending wasted food to a landfill exacerbates environmental problems, including climate change.
Wasted food is such a problem that the Environmental Protection Agency has developed a food waste hierarchy to demonstrate best practices for addressing food waste. Not surprising, sending food to a landfill is at the bottom of the hierarchy, the least desirable outcome. Producing less food — whether a family cooking dinner at home, a restaurant preparing hundreds of meals a day or a grocery store stocking its shelves — tops the list. The U.S. Department of Agriculture should take this hierarchy to heart and stop subsidizing farmers to grow too much of some crops, which USDA then buys and stores. Feeding the hungry is the EPA’s second suggestion for dealing with food waste. Feeding animals, industrial uses and composting round out the hierarchy.
If food waste were a country, only two nations — the U.S. and China — would record higher greenhouse gas emissions. Methane, the major emission from rotting food, has 34 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide, the primary focus of emission reduction efforts.
Dumping wholesome food in a landfill is nonsensical, especially when so many of our neighbors are struggling to feed themselves and their families. If Pingree’s bill can turn the tables so more people are fed and less food goes to the dump, it will be a success.
