Food waste is one of the most concerning issues plaguing humanity. We waste tons of food and billions of dollars each year, and the trend has only gotten worse recently. What can we do to stop this?

Here’s everything you need to know about food waste, what we can do to fix it and the benefits we can expect from reducing it.

How Does Food Waste Happen?

First, it’s important to distinguish food waste from food loss. Loss occurs when food gets destroyed or contaminated during production, storage or distribution. We can no longer eat the food, so we must discard it. Two common causes of food loss are spills and insufficient storage, leading to spoiling.

On the other hand, food waste is the willful disposal of good food. This problem is primarily due to improper planning and negligence, making it largely avoidable. Food waste plagues the entire world and squanders incredible amounts of food and money annually.

Efforts to Reduce Food Waste

National governments and international organizations alike have implemented regulations to streamline the supply chain and recover as much food as possible. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has outlined a Food Recovery Hierarchy that serves as the basis for many countries’ efforts in reusing excess food:

• Source reduction: Reduce the volume of surplus food generated
• Feed the hungry: Donate extra food to homeless shelters and soup kitchens
• Feed animals: Convert food scraps into animal feed
• Industrial uses: Convert wasted food and oils into organic fuel sources
• Composting: Create nutrient-rich soil from food waste
• Landfill/incineration: Only use when necessary

Citizens can also take small actions in their daily lives to reduce food waste, such as creating a weekly meal plan, starting their own compost piles and investing in products made from more sustainable and durable materials. Food waste is an individual issue as much as a collective one. We all must pull our weight.

People from all walks of life have taken up the mantle to inspire and educate others on living more sustainably. Government leaders, independent scientists and farmers alike all play their own critical roles in making the global agricultural economy more efficient. Progress will be slow, but any improvement is worth the investment.

Benefits of Reducing Food Waste

Post-harvest management (PHM) is a noteworthy term activists use to describe food waste reduction efforts in developing countries — particularly in Africa and the Middle East. Many countries have little trouble making food, but the goods tend to get misused for various reasons. International groups have worked together to bring assistance to these countries in several ways:

• Manage and supervise postharvest activities
• Provide technical expertise to developing nations
• Train partners in applying a market systems development (MSD) approach to help streamline PHM
• Teach the latest and best agricultural methodologies to local inhabitants
• Share knowledge on PHM through events, documents and online platforms

Developing countries are overwhelmingly agricultural, so food waste deals a more crushing blow to their infrastructure than nations like the United States. However, that also means these struggling countries stand to benefit the most from efforts like PHM and the Food Recovery Hierarchy’s circular model.

Monitoring PHM more closely and sending food waste back into the economy for other purposes allows for significant benefits:

• Households save money on food expenses
• Local farms receive more positive returns on investment
• Lower methane emissions are produced from landfills
• Carbon footprints are reduced
• Energy and resources are saved
• More community support comes from donations

Reducing food waste can improve the environment and quality of life, from the average household to a country’s entire ecosystem. We just have to make the right decisions.

Reducing Food Waste Saves Lives

In the end, everyone benefits from reducing food waste: citizens, countries and our planet as a whole. Rather than throwing our excess food away, we can find simple and sustainable ways to send it back into the environment so it can make the world a better place. Reducing food waste saves precious resources, keeps the planet clean and saves lives.