
Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass - akbarnama
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/23/americans-throw-out-more-food-than-plastic-paper-metal-or-glass/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
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michaelkeenan
Tentatively - this might not really be much of a problem? In many situations,
we deliberately make sure we have excess capacity because it's better to have
too much than too little. For example, I have a server running idle most of
the time, but it's available to pick up a large long-running task when a user
requests it. Analogously, when catering for an event, people often aim to have
more than enough food for almost all scenarios, so they'll throw away food
almost all the time. Running a restaurant is catering an event every day. When
I was a teenager, I worked at Subway and we'd try to have more than enough
bread (we only ran out once when we didn't anticipate a large sports-win-based
city-wide party), so we'd throw away excess bread at the end of each day.

Of course, people are starving and that's terrible. But reducing food waste in
developed countries doesn't seem like a powerful lever to reduce it. Non-
wasted food isn't going to be transported to developing nations. Reducing food
demand would likely decrease food prices, but I wouldn't expect a large
decrease. If my understanding is correct, the food supply is quite elastic,
meaning we can easily produce more if there's people willing and able to pay
for it.

I think that the two main problems behind starvation are the lack of
purchasing power of the poverty-stricken, and broken political systems.
Solving those would eliminate starvation, even if the developed nations waste
as much food as they like.

(I'm no expert on this and welcome any corrections or opposing views.)

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k-mcgrady
>> "we'd throw away excess bread at the end of each day"

And here's the problem. Good food getting wasted. That bread would be
perfectly fine the next day and 90% of people would be happy with it but the
business would rather waste it and have something perfect. The same thing
happens in grocery stores. If a multi pack of crisps/chips splits they throw
out the entire thing even though every pack inside the large container remains
sealed. They could sell those individually or tape up the outer container and
offer a discount. When I worked in a grocery store the amount of good food
thrown away was unbelievable. I'm sure the amount of wasted food could be
reduced significantly by focusing on these areas which don't fall under the
'better to have too much than too little' rule you mentioned.

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disputin
I'm guessing you got voted down because people don't want to eat bread baked
the previous evening. Of course, I don't know because there are no frikkin'
comments from the trigger happy. Even if they don't like your bread idea,
doesn't your multi-pack point cancel that out? Waitrose discounts ageing
sandwiches. I think you have a point that small improvements could be made in
multiple areas. Assuming waste is a problem.

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ntaso
In Germany, in some places there are bakeries that offer bread from the day
before for a discount.

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anigbrowl
_But there 's another less apparent problem with food waste: the threat to the
environment. Landfills full of decomposing food release methane, which is said
to be at least 20 times more lethal a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide._

Surely this just releases carbon that was fixed during the development of the
plant/animal that is now decomposing? I'm a little unclear on why this is
worse than natural decomposition.

I would like to know why the amount of food wasted took off in 1980 and nearly
quadrupled over the following 3 decades. i'm guessing changes in USDA
standards about acceptable quality of food for sale, but I was hoping the
author would have researched this.

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patio11
I'm guessing it is mostly increasing affluence [+], partially causing a
portion size war for food other than prepared-at-home meals (which are a much
larger percentage of the US diet in 2014 as compared to 1980), and partially
applying somewhat richer standards with regards to what food is fresh enough
for consumption. At a certain point of affluence, why have three day old
leftovers (even if they're palatable) when that competes with a generous
serving of delicious piping hot fresh-cooked food? Why keep half a bunch of
bananas which are two days from optimally ripe when you can simply replace
them with a bunch of bananas which are optimally ripe? etc, etc

I'd expect global food waste, measured in terms of absolute tonnage, to go up
over time as the world gets wealthier and less people, at the margin, have to
make the choice between "eat foot which is less than maximally palatable to
me" and "go hungry."

[+] "But Americans aren't richer in 2014 compared to 1980." Long story, but I
strongly disbelieve this, especially with regards to food.

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mga226
> eat foot which is less than maximally palatable to me

I'm embarrassed to admit that I spent several minutes trying to make sense of
this comment before realizing you almost certainly meant "eat _food_..."

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oneofthose
Food production has become cheap and efficient. So efficient in fact, that it
has apparently no significant economic impact if "as much as 40 percent of
America's food supply ends up in a dumpster". Otherwise, the market would
improve efficiency with regards to wasting all that food.

I find particularly appalling that the production of animal products has
become so economical that it does not matter that so much is thrown away.
Efficient meat production means of course factory farming and questionable
treatment of animals. This is a problem. The other problem is with the
consumers of such cheap animal products. They are not aware anymore, have no
respect for the fact that the thing they just gobbled up (and threw away) was
once a living breathing being. It is sad.

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pesenti
Even if you ignore the symbolism of throwing food while people still die of
hunger, I am surprised by the "so what?" reaction of this crowd. Isn't YC
about improving efficiencies? Yes there is waste elsewhere, the average server
utilization in a data center is 12% but that's one reason the cloud came along
with a 60% utilization (see [http://www.boozallen.com/media/file/Economics-of-
Cloud-Compu...](http://www.boozallen.com/media/file/Economics-of-Cloud-
Computing.pdf)) and new technologies like Docker will likely make that even
higher.

So instead of saying "So what?" shouldn't we say: "we can do better and this
is a business opportunity"?

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guard-of-terra
There's not much business opportunity in people who don't have money.

~~~
pesenti
Why does it have to involve people who don't have money? How about not
producing the food in the first place through better logistic? That could
potentially be a huge saving for rich people.

~~~
tfinniga
That's an interesting point. How would you take advantage of this?

I think the main reason why people buy more food than they need is because the
demand is somewhat unknown, and food is so cheap that it's safer to err on the
side of having too much. That is, it's worth it to pay more in order to not
have to worry about whether you'll have enough food when you want it.

Right now the only way to make sure you have enough is to buy more than you
need by a safety margin. But what if there was some way to easily
procure/prepare the food on an as-needed basis?

I've seen ideas about having a 3d printer, where large stocks of food could be
kept and combined as needed into a variety of recipes. The inputs would be
stored dry, so they won't go bad as quickly.

This might work, but there are downsides as well. Specifically, you might have
problems getting the food to taste good enough to be a viable alternative.
From the link, the top types of food wasted are fruit and veg, seafood,
grains, meat, and milk. A powdered version of grains might work, but you'd
probably have difficult getting all other types to be tasty/healthy enough. I
mean, there's a reason why everyone isn't eating canned food all the time.

Another idea is to improve the just-in-time logistics, like the drone burrito
delivery. Aside from the regulatory hurdles, I think this would work pretty
well - pay more in order to not have to worry about whether you'll have enough
food when you want it. There might also be a B2B angle to this with
restaurants or grocery stores. Amazon has done some work on this with
AmazonFresh, where they do same-day delivery of perishables.

The other thing to realize is that the actual farming is apparently only
16-18% of the price paid for the food, so you'd hope to get efficiencies
elsewhere.

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iopq
It's economics. If I buy half a gallon of half and half, I know full well I
don't need half a gallon for my coffee before it spoils.

I estimate that between 40% and 0% of it will be wasted on average depending
on how many weeks it lasts in the fridge. But if I compare it to buying a
quart, a quart will cost me around $2.49 while half a gallon would cost me
$3.79

This means that for a cost of $3.79 I get to use 0.4 gallons on average, while
for $4.98 I get to use 0.5 gallons (assuming a quart never expires, which
isn't true, I've had a quart go bad after a little over a week)

This means that for 0.4 gallons buying quart by quart I have to pay 3.98, but
buying half a gallon I pay less. So my strategy is then to buy quarts when
they're on sale (when I can get them for $1.99) and half a gallon when I have
no discount.

~~~
spacefight
Shocking. Just buy what you need and live happier :)

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ChuckMcM
There are questions here which the story doesn't answer and I think might be
germane to the issues. One is what is the _per capita_ amount of food thrown
out between now and 1960. The population according to the census went from
180M to 308M or an increase of 71%. At a simple geometric ratio if you assume
that would make 20M lbs the '1960's equivalent. And there is the sudden change
in the slope in 1980, (what is up with that?) and there is no reference to
whether or not things recycled are considered to be part of the 'trash' or
not. Between 1980 and today our "garbage" has largely skewed toward food
because every thing else is usually in the recycle bin (paper, plastic,
containers, Etc.) The article seems to try to connect this amount of food
waste and hunger, although avoids the locality issue and spoilage, where
20,000 tons of juicy grapes in Napa county California can do nothing for sub-
Sarahan Africa hunger. Even Rice crops which _can_ feed people anywhere in the
world are under utilized when the government people have in place prevents
such aid from arriving, or spends their resources on other things rather than
securing food.

Having looked at the 'hunger' problem in a lot of ways, and supported a number
of efforts to combat it where it can be addressed, I have come to understand
how much food is lost through spoilage or is discarded by people who might
have eaten it, is irrelevant to the larger problems. There may be a connection
at some level but I have yet to find a situation where the people who need
food, would have had it available but for the fact that someone else had
already gotten it and thrown it away.

~~~
adventured
The slope is caused by the rapid and dramatic rise in insta-meals for the
home. Americans began to adopt an entirely different approach to making food
at home, and eating with the family, as compared to the prior decades.

Microwaves, frozen dinners, quick-prep foods from the grocery store, etc.

The focus became a lot less on quality and more on speed and convenience. If
something is a blah $3 quick meal (circa 1985), most people probably began to
feel indifferent about throwing out the left-overs, as compared to spending an
hour preparing something of greater quality.

I also doubt that spike is exact to lifting off in a singular point in 1980.
It's likely not very precise data, and is instead a best-guesstimate (note
also of course it tracks by decade rather than year, another sign they don't
have precise data).

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ingenieros
If you are of the believe that throwing away food is really not that big of a
deal I would encourage you to join your local chapter of Food not bombs for a
single day to see if you walk away from that experience feeling the same way.
I did this for a whole summer a few years back and it changed my outlook
completely. We used to collect bread and other foods from grocery stores that
was approaching its Sell By date, but was perfectly fine and safe for human
consumption. We would then gather all the veggies we would collect from local
farmes market and make some really nutritious and hearty soups and stews which
we would then distribute to the homeless in downtown Los Angeles. After you've
witnesses the gratitude from someone who might have gone to bed on an empty
stomach you will seriously find yourself questioning the politics that make it
illegal for folks to dumpster dive or to redistribute food that would have
otherwise ended up producing more methane gas in a landfill as this article
suggests.

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Lazare
Isn't that uh...kind of to be expected?

Food is cheap, renewable, spoils fast, and can't really be recycled usefully
(compost and bio-diesel stills are very fringe cases. The other items on the
list are some mixture of expensive, non-renewable, non-perishable, or easily
recyclable.

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po
That first chart is terrible. I can't believe the Washington Post allows a
chart which gives a 2 year period from 2010-2012 the same visual width as 10
year periods. It makes it look like the rate has leveled off.

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jp8000
My grand parents lived through the second world war and food shortage was a
big issue during and after the war. That's why my parents and grand parents
always taught my siblings and I to respect food and avoid any waste.

I believe that's very common among people my age (40) in Europe. I wonder if
that's just less true of Americans and younger Europeans because hard times
are further away from them.

~~~
maxerickson
The Great Depression left a lot of Americans with a similar attitude (my
grandparents saved _everything_ ), but as you say, we are ~1 generation
further removed from that event.

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pessimizer
Individuals are not particularly responsible for this, this is bad business
behavior. Supermarkets and restaurants waste a lot of food as part of normal
business. I'd be surprised if I've personally thrown out more food than I
could hold in the past two years. I remember throwing out a couple of inches
of a half gallon of spoiled milk a month ago, I think.

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EddyTaylor
Here are some more facts about food wastage in America: 1\. America wasted
33.79 million tons of food in 2010 and this figure keeps on increasing as
population grows. 2\. The above mentioned figure is enough to fill 91 Empire
state buidings. 3\. 17.2 households in America were insecure of food in 2010.

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maxerickson
Has anybody figured out how the article is accounting for recycling?

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otikik
Completely anecdotical: I have been in this country 5 days and I have already
gained 3 kilos.

~~~
sehr
Water weight maybe? The drinks are huge and refills are free

