EPA Unveils Game-Changing Insights on Food Waste

Introduction

For years, work in the U.S. on reducing wasted food has been framed by the EPA’s Food Recovery Hierarchy, a way of ranking the environmental preferability for solutions to reduce food waste. Now, the hierarchy has gotten a welcome makeover, evolving into the Wasted Food Scale, which provides a level of nuance that is reflective of current research and data. The new scale adds some categories (e.g. sending food down the drain to wastewater, which is ranked among the least preferable) and reorganizes others, including elevating the ranking of composting. As with the original hierarchy, the Wasted Food Scale affirms that prevention, or keeping food from going to waste in the first place, is still the best way to reduce the climate and other environmental impacts of wasted food.

Key Differences in the Wasted Food Scale

• Incorporates new pathways:
• The Wasted Food Scale adds four common wasted food pathways—upcycling, unharvested/plowed in, land application, and sewer/wastewater treatment—but removes the broad pathway of “industrial uses” since there are numerous wasted food pathways (with a range of environmental impacts) that could be covered by this broad term. Anaerobic digestion, now the most common industrial use of food scraps, is now considered as two categories in the scale, with anaerobic digestion with beneficial use of digestate (meaning digestate is treated to be suitable as a soil amendment) ranked higher than anaerobic digestion without beneficial use of digestate (in which digestate is disposed in landfills or incinerators).

• Considers value of end products:
• The Wasted Food Scale moves composting to the same tier as anaerobic digestion (with beneficial use of digestate). Both composting and anaerobic digestion with beneficial digestate use produce soil amendments that significantly improve soil health, including adding nutrient and water-holding capabilities, enhancing soil structure, and sequestering carbon. The scale also distinguishes within pathways based on whether the products created by a particular pathway (e.g., compost or digestate) have a beneficial end use (such as soil amendments) or whether they are disposed (in landfills, incinerators, or down the drain). Those that have a beneficial end use rank higher.

EPA’s Reports on Wasted Food

The Wasted Food Scale reflects the conclusions of two new and groundbreaking reports released in October by EPA. The first report, “From Field to Bin: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Management Pathways (Part 2)”, follows up on the 2021 report, “From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste (Part 1)” (see NRDC’s blog about “From Farm to Kitchen” here). Together, Part 1 and Part 2 of the reports bring together new data and analysis to demonstrate the environmental impacts of wasted food throughout the supply chain, from farm to kitchen to management.

Insights from “From Field to Bin” Report

• Source reduction, donation and upcycling are the most environmentally preferable pathways because they can displace additional food production.
• The benefits of pathways beyond source reduction, donation, and upcycling are small relative to the environmental impacts of food production; thus, they can do little to offset the environmental impacts of food production.
• Sewer/wastewater treatment and landfill stand out for their sizeable methane emissions.
• All wasted food pathways other than landfill and sewer/wastewater treatment demonstrate beneficial or near neutral global warming potential.
• Recycling wasted food into soil amendments offers opportunities to make long-term improvements in soil structure and health and help regenerate ecosystems by recovering nitrogen and carbon and returning them to the soil.
• As the U.S. becomes less dependent on fossil fuels for energy, the environmental value of producing energy from wasted food will decrease.

Insights from “Quantifying Methane Emissions from Landfilled Food Waste” Report

• In 2020, food waste was responsible for approximately 55 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (mmt CO2e) emissions from U.S. MSW (municipal solid waste) landfills.
• An estimated 58 percent of the fugitive methane emissions (i.e., those released to the atmosphere) from MSW landfills are from landfilled food waste.
• An estimated 61 percent of methane generated by landfilled food waste is not captured by landfill gas collection systems and is released to the atmosphere.
• While total methane emissions from MSW landfills are decreasing due to improvements in landfill gas collection systems, methane emissions from landfilled food waste are increasing.
• Reducing landfilled food waste by 50 percent in 2015 could have decreased cumulative fugitive landfill methane emissions by approximately 77 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents (mmt CO2e) by 2020, compared to business as usual.

Conclusion

Given these new insights about landfill methane, we need governments at all levels to start paying more attention to food waste reduction as a near-term climate solution. One way they might do that is by cities and states including food waste reduction activities in their climate action plans, and the federal government awarding funding to bring those local projects to life. As we inch closer to 2030, the year we aim to cut food waste by 50 percent per our national goal, we need the most recent and relevant information to guide the decisions that will help us achieve that goal. Both of EPA’s new reports confirm the need for continuing to work across the scale to prevent food from going to waste and to keep any food scraps out of landfills and incinerators. And the new Wasted Food Scale demonstrates some of the nuances in the ways we manage food waste reduction and highlights where we should be investing our efforts both in terms of resources and policy. These reports and the Wasted Food

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 2: Zero Hunger
• SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
• SDG 13: Climate Action
• SDG 15: Life on Land

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 2.1: By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.
• SDG 12.3: By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.
• SDG 13.3: Improve education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning.
• SDG 15.3: By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought, and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator 2.1.1: Prevalence of undernourishment
• Indicator 12.3.1: Food loss index
• Indicator 13.3.1: Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning into primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula
• Indicator 15.3.1: Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators Table

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Source: nrdc.org

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