--- title: Food Waste: Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage description: The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year canonical: https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-10-02T19:16:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-30T11:02:53.218Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage og:description: The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year og:url: https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe31fb72f7ab906a/698866b3a988caa7d46b4a77/food-waste.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: food-waste.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage twitter:description: The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe31fb72f7ab906a/698866b3a988caa7d46b4a77/food-waste.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage ## Video: Watch How These Researchers Are Ensuring Food Security In America [Watch (HLS stream): Watch How These Researchers Are Ensuring Food Security In America](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/grN5uxCF.m3u8) (3:49)  _Published 2015-09-15. In an effort to provide food security to America, a team of researchers, veterinarians, and farmers at the SVF Foundation are preserving genetic material from rare and important breeds of livestock, like the Holstein._ by [Rep. Raúl Grijalva](https://time.com/author/rep-raul-grijalva/) and [Michael Shank](https://time.com/author/michael-shank/) Oct 2, 2015 7:16 PM UTC  Pile of rotting fruit and vegetables near water Pile of rotting fruit and vegetables near waterGetty Images by [Rep. Raúl Grijalva](https://time.com/author/rep-raul-grijalva/) and [Michael Shank](https://time.com/author/michael-shank/) Oct 2, 2015 7:16 PM UTC When it comes to tackling climate change, one of the greatest challenges we face is understanding the myriad factors that influence our warming planet. Addressing some while ignoring others will only allow the mercury to continue to rise. And while threats like carbon pollution and environmental degradation feature prominently into any discussion about solving this crisis—_and rightfully so—_there’s still at least one significant factor that remains noticeably absent from our discourse: food. Wasted food in particular, and there’s a lot of it. Globally, nearly [30%](http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196402/icode/) of all agricultural land produces food that is ultimately lost or wasted. That’s more than [1.3 billion](http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf) metric tons of edible food—a sizable slab of the roughly 6 billion tons of total global agricultural production for both food and non-food use. Waste appears throughout the supply chain, from produce damaged at farms to retail packages that don’t properly store food, to our very own eating habits that lead us to discard food before it has passed its prime. And when this food goes uneaten, we waste the water and energy needed to produce it, harvest it and bring it to market. We allow for unnecessary nitrous oxide emissions from the fertilizer used to grow crops, and then we dump the wasted food into a landfill where it emits methane gas. The carbon footprint this all leaves is staggering: [3.3 billion](http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf) tons of greenhouse gas emissions, or about [7%](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/us/food-waste-is-becoming-serious-economic-and-environmental-issue-report-says.html?%5Fr=0) of total global emissions. That’s a lot of carbon. In fact, if “food waste” were a nation, it’d be one of the [largest emitters globally](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/un-says-that-if-food-waste-was-a-country-ite28099d-be-the-3-global-greenhouse-gas-emitter/), outranked only by China and the U.S. Beyond the obvious environmental impacts, the socio-economic consequences are equally disastrous. Direct economic losses from wasted food total [$750 billion](http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196220/icode/) annually, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. That hits the pocketbook of every single American, with an average cost per person in this country of [$640 worth of wasted food](http://time.com/3933554/food-waste/) each year. This is a serious problem in how we are using—_or in this case, misusing—_our natural resources. As about [800 million](http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats) people around the world suffer from chronic hunger, food that could—_and should—_be eaten is going to waste. That’s why food waste was front-and-center on the U.N.’s docket this week during the General Assembly, at a high-level [luncheon](http://news.yahoo.com/menu-world-leaders-trash-message-191042230.html) hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for heads of state. And it’s why former White House Chef Sam Kass and prominent New York chef Dan Barber joined forces to cook up a [delicious dinner](http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/2015/09/28/food-waste-is-an-environmental-problem) presidents and prime ministers of spent grain, vegetable scraps, off-grade produce, cascara and nut press cake. It’s that important. We must employ every effort to retool our food system, from better [refrigeration](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/28/444188475/even-poor-countries-end-up-wasting-tons-of-food) in the developing world to a rethink of arbitrary [expiration](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/02/ignore%5Fexpiration%5Fdates.html) dates. Most people don’t realize that these dates are set by companies, not health agencies. The lack of federal standards leads to vast inconsistencies, and often times means food that could still be eaten ends up in the trash instead. As if the benefits to our environment and efforts to feed the hungry aren’t reason enough to pursue these reforms, the economic opportunities they create are significant, too. The World Bank [estimates](http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/MissingFoods10%5Fweb.pdf) that just a 1% reduction in food loss could yield gains of $40 million each year, the majority of which would go directly to small farmers growing the food, and seed into local economies across the country. The reforms we need are entirely within reach, provided we have the political stomach, if you will, to make sure all the world’s mouths are fed. The fix is achievable. It starts with the reducing and recycling and requires a keen focus on solving the logistical challenges of getting appropriate food to those communities in need. 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