With Support From The Rockefeller Foundation, NRDC Releases Report: What, Where and How Much Food Is Wasted in Cities
Food is the largest component of what we send to landfills in the U.S., representing nearly 22% of disposed municipal solid waste. When we waste food, we not only add organic materials to landfills (where they generate methane, a powerful global warming pollutant), but we also waste all the water, land, energy, money, labor, and other resources that go into growing, processing, distributing, and storing that food.
Many cities are adopting goals to reduce the amount of materials sent to disposal, which means tackling food waste. In order to set goals and assess progress in reducing wasted food, cities need basic information about how much food is being wasted and where that waste occurs. Yet very few cities have studied how much food is actually going to waste in their boundaries, or the characteristics of that waste, including where and why food is discarded, what types of food are wasted, and how much of that food was potentially edible.
New NRDC research, conducted with support from The Rockefeller Foundation and other funders, takes that first critical step for three major U.S. cities—Denver, Nashville and NYC—providing templates and information to better understand how much, what, and where food is being wasted...