Last winter, teams of researchers in three U.S. cities donned goggles, gloves, and respirators, tore into bags of other people’s household garbage, and then pawed though the contents. Separating slimy banana peels from clumps of coffee grounds was dirty work, but it had a laudable goal: trying to get a handle on how much food waste could have been consumed or diverted before winding its way into the waste stream with a one-way ticket to the dump.
The problems associated with urban food waste are no mystery. Proof of the problem is everywhere, in overflowing garbage bins and grime-slicked compost caddies. Food scraps contribute to the already sizable piles of refuse that cities must haul to landfills; shuttling edible castoffs to people in need requires labyrinthine routes and mind-boggling logistics; and gases released by decomposing leftovers detract from cities’ work toward reining in emissions. But there’s surprisingly little hard data about who’s wasting what, and where, which makes it harder for cities to address the issue.
To sniff out specifics, the engineering company Tetra Tech (in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rockefeller Foundation) recruited more than 1,151 residents in Denver, New York, and Nashville. Of these, 631 supplied qualitative info in the form of kitchen diaries noting what they tossed and why. Researchers also inspected the contents of 277 residential trash bins, and 145 containers of commercial or industrial garbage.
Now, the team has digested the data in a pair of reports that take stock of how food waste shakes out in these cities, and what they can do to clean up their act.
The researchers divided trashed food into three categories: stuff that is typically edible, questionably edible (including peels and cores), and inedible (such as pits, bones, and egg shells). They then tallied up findings from the bin digs and kitchen diaries to gauge how much is going to waste in each city. In Denver and New York, residents trashed the majority of the wasted food; in Nashville, the residential and restaurant sectors were neck and neck.
Denverites trashed the most edible food—about 7.5 pounds per household each week—followed by New York (5.4 pounds) and then Nashville (4.6 pounds). Overall, these sums are lower than previous estimates from ReFED, a consortium of food-centric organizations, which placed the weekly figure around 11.6 pounds per household.
Across all three cities, coffee and grounds were the goods most often pitched in the trash, trailed by bananas (in Nashville and New York) and chicken (in Denver). Apples, bread, oranges, and potatoes also topped the list, as did discarded dairy products.
In the accompanying kitchen diaries, respondents described why they opted to jettison these scraps. Forty-four percent of participants said they were getting rid of inedible portions; 20 percent reported moldy or spoiled food, and 11 percent indicated they weren’t interested in the leftovers. Only 4 percent of residents noted that they’d discarded food because it was past the date printed on the label, though perceived confusion over inscrutable labeling practices has spurred legislation to standardize and streamline “best by” and “use by” language.
The reports also qualified attitudes toward waste. Most respondents preferred fruit without blemishes; still, more than half of the respondents said they “always” or “mostly” excised bruised portions and salvaged the rest of the fruit or vegetable. And though some indicated that squandering food felt morally icky, 58 percent of the respondents indicated less guilt about wasting food if they knew it was going to be composted.
To read the full story, visit https://www.citylab.com/environment/2017/10/food-waste-report-nrdc-rockefeller/543879/.