Valuing our Food:
Minimizing Waste and Optimizing Resources
The Scope of the Global Food Waste Problem
Steven M. Finn
ResponsEcology, Inc.
University of Pennsylvania
www.responsecology.com

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Key Takeaways
• Worldwide hunger and massive global food
waste: A serious disconnect exists…
• Our values are out of balance
• We have lost touch with the value of our food –
to the detriment of people and planet
• The current state of waste, pollution, and
hunger is unsustainable
• 9Bx2050 provides a critical opportunity
• A collaborative, effective, global network
focusing on shared values and urgency is needed
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Global Food Waste: Scope
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Food Waste in the US
• 1977: a study estimated that 20% of the food
produced in the US for human consumption
was lost annually – at that time 137 million
tons with a value of $31 billion Source: USDA Report to
Congress, 1977
• Two decades later, another study estimated
US food losses at 96 billion pounds annually
(or 27% of food available for human
consumption) Source: Kantor et al., 1997
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Food Waste in the US
• A recent NRDC study noted that 40% of the
food in the US is not eaten
• This translates to 20 lbs. of food per person
per month and a value of $165 billion
Source: Gunders, 2012
• Conclusion: Regarding food waste in the US,
we have regressed in 35 years
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Food Waste in the UK
• High rates of food waste in the UK as well
WRAP noted that:
• UK households waste 6.7 million tons of food
per year (about 33% of purchases)
• With proper management, more than 60% of
that food could have been eaten
• Nearly 25% of all avoidable food waste was
discarded in a whole/unopened state
Source: WRAP, 2008
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Global Losses
• A study by SIWI noted that food losses and
wastage could be as high as 50% from field to
fork Source: Lundqvist,2008
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Global Losses
• About 1/3 of all
edible parts of
food produced
globally for human
consumption go to
waste annually
• That’s 1.3 billion
tons annually
Source: Gustavvson et al., 2011
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One Trillion Reasons
• In US dollars, FAO estimates food losses and
food waste total about $680 billion in
industrialized countries, and $310 billion in
developing countries Source: FAO Save Food, 2013
• That’s nearly one trillion US dollars…
$ 1,000,000,000,000
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Global Food Waste by Product
Source: FAO: Food Wastage Footprints, 2012
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Global Losses
• Global food losses of this magnitude are
unconscionable
• “The potential to provide 60-100% more food
by simply eliminating losses, while
simultaneously freeing up land, energy, and
water resources for other uses, is an
opportunity that should not be ignored.”
Source: Fox, Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 2013
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Some Causes of Food Waste
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Extreme Weather
Pests
Regulations
Overly selective quality standards
Damage from machinery
Loss in Transport and storage
Food prep and conversion
Supply and demand variability
Damaged packaging
Over-purchasing
Confusion over sell-by dates
Plate waste
Source: Kantor et al. 1997
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Where Food Waste and Losses Occur
• Developing countries (post
harvest and processing
stages) vs. Industrialized
countries (greater impact
of retail and consumer
level losses)
• Europe and North America,
largest per capita food loss
(avg. 280-300 kg/year)
• About 36% of that loss is at
the consumer level
• Comparison: In developing
countries, food losses at
consumer level roughly 6%
Source: Gustavvson et al., 2011
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Developing countries
• Lack of infrastructure is critical
• Transportation, refrigeration problems
• Much material is lost in transit to market, or
rots in inadequate storage facilities
• Little waste at market; food is simply too
valuable!
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Industrialized countries
• Highly efficient transportation systems allow
for rapid movement of food over great
distances
• Consumers expert convenience, fully stocked
shelves at all times and “perfect” produce
• System based on oversupply and uniformity
• Vast amounts of waste at market
• “Imperfect” produce culled out at farm
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Excess Fruit In, Excess Fruit Out
• Excess supply and quest for perfection = waste
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Chicken In, Chicken Out
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Poor Infrastructure, and Apathy
• Food waste in
developing nations
results from a lack of
infrastructure for
storage and
transportation
• Food waste in
industrialized nations
stems largely from a
culture of abundance,
and apathy
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Abundance = Myth, Illusion
“Industrialized nations need to learn what it means to
live in scarcity – because the appearance of infinite
abundance is an illusion.” Tristram Stuart, Waste, 2009

Valuing Food and Resources
• How much do we
value our food?
• And the resources to
produce it?
• How often do we
consider the
weaknesses of the
food system, and the
waste that results?

A Move to Mainstream
• Food Waste is not yet a
mainstream issue in
industrialized nations
• The US spends $1
billion annually to
dispose of food waste
Source: www.endhunger.org 2013
• It must become part of
national, and global,
agendas
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Global Food Waste: Significance
• Food Waste has direct and significant bearing
on the two most pressing issues of our time –
poverty/hunger and the environment
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Significance: Global Hunger
• 870 million people (12.5% of the global
population) were undernourished from 2010
to 2012 Source: FAO, WFP, and IFAD 2012
• About 98% of these individuals lived in
developing countries Source: FAO, WFP, and IFAD 2012
• 2 billion individuals are now facing one or
more micronutrient deficiencies Source: FAO 2013
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Significance: US Hunger
The US is the most prosperous nation, yet:
• Over 50 million Americans (about 1 in 6) lived in
food insecure households in 2011
• About 17 million of them were children
• About 5 million were seniors
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Source: www.feedingamerica.org, 2013
• Also, at 23.1%, the US recently ranked 34 of 35
among industrialized countries in terms of the
relative percentage of children living in poverty
Source: UNICEF 2012
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Significance: Lost Calories
• Wasted food prevents needed calories from
reaching the mouths of the needy
• If we could save ¼ of the food currently lost
or wasted globally, it would be enough to
feed the 870 million hungry across the globe
today
Source: FAO Save Food 2013
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Significance: Wasted Nutrients
• All too often, high
quality calories (fruits,
vegetables, and meat
proteins go to the
waste stream rather
than to individuals
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Significance: Obesity
• More than 1/3 of Americans are obese,
including 17% of children ages 2-19 Source:
www.cdc.gov 2013
• In the US, obesity rates have doubled in
children and tripled in adolescents in the last
30 years Source: www.cdc.gov 2013
• High quality calories currently being wasted
could offset the challenges of food deserts
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Environmental Impact
• Wasted Food = Wasted Water
• “Globally, the loss of water through food
wastage would easily meet the household
water needs of the 9 billion people expected
in 2050”
Source: FAO: Food Wastage Footprints, 2012

Environmental Impact: Air
• Wasted Food = Air Pollution
• Food waste is a major component of landfills;
decomposing food pollutes the air and
contributes to global warming through
methane emissions
• Methane gas has more than 20 times the
global warming potential of carbon dioxide
Source: www.epa.gov, 2013
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Environmental Impact: Energy
• Wasted Food = Wasted Energy
• US food wastage represents 300 million
barrels of oil per year
• That’s 4% of our nation’s oil use
Source: FAO: Food Wastage Footprints, 2012
• And we use even more energy when we haul
it away to landfills

Environmental Impact: Resources
• Wasted Food = Wasted Resources
• Waste of all of the Agricultural inputs that
went into producing the wasted food –
including fertilizer and pesticides – which also
contribute to water pollution via runoff
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Environmental Impact: Soils
• Wasted Food = Depleted soils
• The production of meat and dairy products
wasted annually in the US and UK require 8.3
million hectares (about 2/3 the size of NY)
Source: FAO: Food Wastage Footprints, 2012.
• The press for land disrupts climate and
hydrological cycles, and threatens to reduce
the productivity of land by 25% this century
Source: Stuart, 2009.
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Environmental Impact: Land
• Wasted Food =
Increased Landfills
• Food Waste that is
not going to compost
uses up limited space,
increases landfill
requirements, and
creates additional
environmental
problems
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A Dysfunctional Circle
Current Food System: Roughly half of food lost along the way
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The Impact of Dysfunction
• We’re producing more than we need in
developed countries
• At every stage we are devoting finite resources
to produce food that we eventually discard
• In the final stages we inflict even more harm on
the environment by disposing of food that we
did not use (methane emissions, groundwater)
• We fail to divert over a billion tons of excess
food to eliminate hunger annually
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The Result: Wasted Nutrition & Resources
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Typical Findings in Retail Sector
• Bad enough
• Far Worse
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A Problem of Global Security
• How secure is a world where billions are
hungry, and live in communities with others
who have more than they need?
• Where hunger and obesity coexist?
(Dr. Mehmood Khan, PepsiCo)
• And it’s not just a problem for the developing
world
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And a Moral Problem
• There is a moral issue here as well
• All individuals have a basic right to food and
adequate nutrition
• Yet we discard immense quantities of food,
enough to totally eliminate hunger
Source: www.ampleharvest.org, 2013)
• On moral grounds alone, reducing food waste
should be a global priority
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Sum: The Big Disconnect
We waste roughly 30-50% of food produced,
yet:
• Roughly 1 in 8 across the globe are hungry
• We need to feed another 2 billion by 2050
• Resources are limited/environment is
challenged
• We need to find sustainable ways to close the
calorie gap anticipated by 2050
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The Need to Reframe
• Reframe: 9BX2050 = Opportunity
The 9 billion by 2050 problem needs:
• An effective global network
• A focus on opportunity (multiple)
• A sustainability focus
• Urgency
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The Need to be Mainstream
• The lack of mainstream attention given to
food waste – and the lack of a sustained and
unified global effort to reduce it to date –
suggests a lack of understanding of the
potential social, economic, and
environmental benefits of such reduction
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The Need for Awareness & Action
• Increased awareness of the scale of the
global food waste problem is needed among
consumers, business, and government
leaders
• Tangible action is needed by them to reduce
food waste as part of a broad, durable,
collaborative global resource optimization
strategy to prepare the world for 9 billion
people by 2050
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Choices Regarding Excess Food
• EPA Hierarchy view:
Source: www.epa.gov
• How do we make this
second nature for all?
• How do we go even
further?
• It’s about valuing our
resources, especially
our food
• Requires a long term
versus short term view
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Mindset Change
We need global mindset change for sustainable
behavior:
• Social impact
• Environmental impact
• Resource Efficiency
(i.e. people, planet, profit)
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Need to Overcome Barriers to Change
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Lack of awareness, hence lack of concern
“A problem for the next generation”
Short term versus long term focus
Perceived difficulty in donation programs
Fear of liability in donating excess food
Discarding food in trash is too easy and
inexpensive
• Unwillingness to move away from current
economic model which doesn’t factor in costs of
environmental externalities
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Need for Urgent Change
• Food waste must get on national agendas,
and it must become a global priority
• It needs a global network approach
(Rischard) coupled with a focus on
opportunity
• It needs new collaborative partnerships and
urgency
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Rischard: Urgent Global Problems
Key: Poverty & Environment
First 8 of 20 Global Problems:
• Global warming
• Biodiversity and Ecosystem
loss
• Fisheries depletion
• Deforestation
• Water deficits
• Maritime safety and
pollution
• Renewing the attack on
poverty
• Conflict prevention and
preventing terrorism
• Note the link to the food
system for all of these
• Interdependence
• Urgency
• New solutions needed
quickly
Source: Rischard, 2003
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Time for Networked Change
Rischard:
• Need for a “networked governance” approach
• Knowledge-based teams forming transparent
collaborative, global networks
• Appeal to universal values
• Spirit of global citizenship
• Establish global norms regarding minimizing
food waste, and a system to monitor
Source: Rischard, 2003
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Food Waste Crisis = Opportunity
• Yunus: “A great crisis offers great
opportunity” (from The End of Poverty)
• The problem of global food waste is
intertwined with the dual problems of
hunger and the environment
• It provides a colossal opportunity for global
collaboration on elimination of hunger and
optimization of resources
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A Focus on Opportunities
• The overriding opportunity created by the
problem of global food waste in conjunction
with 9Bx2050 can be viewed in several
distinct pieces
• Ten such opportunities include…
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Opportunity #1
Expand national/global awareness and
education on food waste
• Overcome suppressed discomfort
• Change the culture of abundance
• Educate on the value of food
• Educate consumers to drive change
• New compact between consumers & retailers
• Leverage FAO work
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Opportunity #2
Make inroads toward eliminating hunger
• Hunger and food waste must be connected
• Requires short term and long term action
• Partnerships to efficiently capture and redistribute
excess food in the short term
• Long term: global commitment to eliminate
poverty, and hunger
• 9Bx2050 provides the needed urgency for global
collaboration
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Opportunity #3
Make significant contributions to the
environment
• Rising population = more strain on resources
• Food waste violates The Natural Step’s
sustainability conditions
• Lack of access to adequate food and water
promotes an insecure world
• Reducing food waste helps optimize
resources and minimize pollution
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Opportunity #4
Make inroads on obesity and health
• The medical costs of obesity were estimated
at $147 billion in 2008 Source: www.cdc.gov 2013
• Capturing and redirecting excess food can
provide high quality calories to the food
insecure, offset problems of food deserts,
reduce long term health care costs
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Opportunity #5
Build “community” on a much greater level
• Bring nations together with shared purpose
in a global effort to solve the critical
challenges of hunger and the environment
• Opportunity to create unprecedented global
collaboration – the fate of the planet
depends on it
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Opportunity #6
Develop innovative partnerships on food waste
and share success
• Create partnerships to match the excess food
with those who desperately need it
• Educate stakeholders on benefits of partnering
• Capture high quality food, including imperfect
produce; convert excess food into healthy meals
that can be stored/frozen
• Create national and global awareness campaigns
on food waste reduction
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Opportunity #7
Harness the power of business
• Business has incentive to lead sustainability
initiatives; innovating for sustainability is
crucial for survival
• Solving the global food waste problem and
the 9Bx2050 problem provides tremendous
opportunities for business
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Opportunity #8
See the benefits of, and move toward, a new
economic system
• Create recognition of environmental costs
• Move away from take-make-waste model to
a more regenerative economic model which
mimics nature (outputs from one phase
become inputs for another) Source: Senge et al., 2001
• Move toward Capitalism 3.0 (eco-system
awareness) Source: Scharmer, 2009.
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Opportunity #9
Experiment with scaling up; coordinating large
national/global projects
• Draw on lessons from the Olympic Games;
global investment, collaboration, urgency
• Create new compact between consumers and
retailers
• Create New Deal-type programs to capture and
redistribute excess food efficiently
• Legislation to spur food recovery, decrease food
waste
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Opportunity #10
Change the world for the better
• Minimizing global food waste has significant
positive implications for ending hunger,
improving the environment, and enabling
food security for all
• Opportunity to unleash global creative
capacity on a major problem that impacts all
nations
• “Crowdsourcing with uber-purpose”
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Conclusions
• The global food waste problem is enormous,
and intertwined with the problems of hunger
and the environment
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Conclusions
• Our values are far
out of balance
• We have lost touch
with the value of
our food – to the
detriment of people
and planet
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Conclusions
• The current state of waste, pollution, and
hunger is unsustainable
• In 2050, the world’s scarce resources will be
impacted by another two billion people, many
of whom will have increased purchasing power
putting a further strain on resources
• We cannot afford to waste 30-50% of our food,
nor can we afford the environmental impact of
that waste
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Conclusions
• Urgent change is needed to reduce food waste
around the globe
• A new, durable, collaborative global network
with an opportunity focus is needed
• Acting with urgency
• Harnessing expertise, driven by shared values
• Uniting consumers, business, governments, and
NGOS to minimize food waste and optimize
resources to prepare the world for 9 billion by
2050
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Conclusions
• The effort to reduce global food waste is a
key component of the larger sustainability
effort to provide food to millions, improve
the environment, and create a more secure
world
• It is an essential journey in which we all need
to participate
• Need to view as an opportunity that cannot
be missed
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References
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Bloom. American Wasteland. 2010.
FAO. Sustainability Pathways. Food Wastage Footprints. 2012.
FAO. Save Food. Global Initiative on Food Losses and Waste Reduction. 2013.
FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture. 2013.
FAO, WFP, and IFAD. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012.
Fox. Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not. 2013.
Gunders, How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork.
2012.
Gustavvson et al. Global Food Losses and Food Waste – Extent, Causes, and
Prevention. 2011.
Kantor, et al. Estimating and Addressing America’s Food Losses. 1997.
Khan. What is Food Security? http://dsc.discovery.com/tvshows/curiosity/videos/curiosity-expert-mehmood-khan-videos.htm
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References
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Lundqvist et al. Saving Water: From Field to Fork – Curbing Losses and
Wastage in the Food Chain. 2008.
Rischard. New Global Agenda. 2003.
Scharmer. The Blind Spot of Economic Thought: Seven Acupuncture Points
for Shifting to Capitalism 3.0. 2009.
Senge, et al. Innovating Our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution. 2001.
Stuart. Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. 2009.
USDA. Food Waste: An Opportunity To Improve Resource Use. 1977.
UNICEF. Measuring Child Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the
world’s richest countries. 2012.
WRAP. The Food We Waste. 2008.
www.ampleharvest.org. 2013.
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References
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www.cdc.gov. 2013.
www.endhunger.org. 2013.
www.epa.gov. 2013.
www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases.html
www.feedingamerica.org. 2013.
Yunus. The End of Poverty. 2010.
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