Food waste has been called the world’s dumbest problem. That’s not far off. It is certainly an immense sustainability challenge with an underlying opportunity that has yet to be sufficiently embraced.
There is no question that food is central and critical to all that we do, and that transformation of the global food system is an essential element in the effort to ensure that we can sustainably, and equitably, provide sufficient nutritious food for nearly ten billion people by 2050.
And food waste reduction is a core pillar of the ongoing food system transformation effort led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), with good reason.
Currently, the world is losing and wasting between 30-40% of annual food production. Said differently, more than two billion tonnes of food produced is not consumed by humans each year.
Further, despite the fact that roughly 750 million of our fellow citizens are hungry (about 9% of the global population) and more than two billion suffer from nutrient deficiencies, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) notes that we are wasting over one billion meals daily.
This disconnect between wasted food and hunger is, quite simply, a moral and ethical failure.
Financially, food waste is a USD 1 trillion problem. It is also an environmental disaster.
The global food system accounts for over one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while food loss and waste alone is responsible for 8-10% of global emissions. If ranked as a country, wasted food would be the third largest emitter of annual GHGs behind the US and China.
This linkage to emissions is especially critical as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently noted that 2024 was the warmest year on record, at about 1.55°C above the pre-industrial levels. In other words, in just ten years we have breached the 1.5°C limit established in the Paris Agreement on climate change. The past ten years were also the warmest on record.
To further cement the linkage between food and climate, a recent paper in Science noted that “even if all non-food system GHG emissions were immediately stopped and were net zero from 2020 to 2100, emissions from the food system alone would likely exceed the 1.5°C emissions limit between 2051 and 2063.”
Thus, it is clear that we cannot solve the climate crisis without sharply reducing food waste.
In addition, agriculture consumes about 70% of the world’s annual freshwater withdrawals. By extension, food waste accounts for about one-quarter of all water used for agriculture, which involves trillions of gallons.
Our food system, and the unnecessary production embedded in food waste, also degrades soils and leads to deforestation, biodiversity loss, ocean pollution, and the waste of myriad natural resources.
Thus, food waste is a critical nexus issue. By preventing the occurrence of global food waste we can achieve a huge multiplier effect, simultaneously driving progress across multiple SDGs – reducing emissions, cutting water usage, easing pressure on soils, forests, and biodiversity, reducing plastic pollution, and freeing resources to aid food security and address the root causes of poverty.
The world has a global goal for food waste reduction – SDG target 12.3 – which calls for halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030 and reducing food losses along production and supply chains. But unfortunately, progress is off track.
Today, we have a global food system driven by a reinforcing cycle of overproduction and excessive waste with high financial, environmental, and social costs. We are currently failing to feed a population of 8.2 billion while in 25 years we will have to feed an additional two billion – and we will have to do so within planetary boundaries.
The challenge of sustainably feeding the planet is the ultimate case of needing to do more with less, and halving global food waste is essential to meeting that challenge.
With that backdrop, it’s important to assess why we lose and waste so much food annually across the globe, and what we can do about it. Let’s focus on four key themes.
First, we must properly value our food resources. In the decades following the Second World War, the US and other developed countries have rapidly transitioned from a culture of responsibility regarding food resources to a culture of abundance.
As consumers, we have a “big” mindset when it comes to food. We expect large portion sizes – fueled by “value meal” offerings which emphasize volume above all else. We expect perfect, blemish-free fruits and vegetables of uniform size, shape, and color, which of course is out of touch with how such items grow in nature. With our highly automated food system, we are literally surrounded by food – so we expect to be able to obtain great varieties of food items on a 24/7 basis. Our food is also relatively inexpensive, and with shopping and delivery apps we can obtain it with little effort – therefore further reducing our engagement with it. Confusion over date labels leads us to discard food quickly on safety grounds, and disposal is easy and cheap – and largely invisible – so we don’t fully grasp the amount we are throwing away.
Taken together, these and other factors, especially our love of convenience, have fueled a culture which has normalized food wasting behavior and de-normalized food waste reduction behavior. It is simply too easy for individuals to discard excess food and buy more.
Producers, retailers, and foodservice organizations feed this mindset of abundance through a model of overproduction, overstocking, over-portioning, and excessive waste which deprives millions of citizens of needed nutrition while often pushing low-quality calories through donation streams, thus exacerbating poor health outcomes.
Such a culture comes at great cost for people and the planet, unconstrained by the fact that we lack true cost accounting for our food: the deep externalities of food waste are largely not considered by food organizations.
If we valued food properly, we would naturally waste less of it. So, reducing food waste at scale starts with culture change. We must move from a culture of abundance to a culture of responsibility toward our precious food resources.
Second, awareness raising and educational efforts are essential for changing our wasteful food culture. In the last 15 years, initiatives to raise awareness on the scope and scale of the global food waste challenge have been substantial, led by FAO and several food waste-focused NGOs, such as the World Resources Institute (WRI), The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and ReFED. But there is considerably more work to be done to make it a more mainstream, recognizable issue. Going forward, these efforts should have an action focus for behavior change, coupled with national campaigns.
Educational efforts are especially critical to influence next-generation leaders, and food waste should be a component of sustainability curricula in schools. Scientists increasingly warn of cascading risks associated with tipping points in Earth systems, and the food system is a key impact lever. We should make the connection between food waste, hunger, climate change, and biodiversity loss in concert with the challenge of feeding 10 billion people within planetary boundaries by 2050.
While immense, food waste is a very solvable problem. We should be seeking to inspire students to not only raise their expectations for responsible behavior among food operations, but to become influencers, change agents, and disruptors who can drive innovations such as upcycling and technical solutions, food waste reduction policies and collaboration for those policies, and the needed culture change.
Third, embrace innovation for food waste reduction and prioritize prevention. Prevention is the point of maximal impact on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Wasted Food Scale. By preventing the occurrence of wasted food, we avoid all of the externalities associated with production, storage, and distribution of that food from farm to retail to consumer and ultimately to landfill.
Let’s take an example from the foodservice sector, which accounted for 28% of global food waste in 2022 per UNEP’s Food Waste Index Report 2024. Leanpath, a food waste solutions provider, produces integrated measurement tools coupled with data analytics and behavior change functionality to cut food waste in foodservice operations in multiple sectors, including hospitality, healthcare, education, corporate, and more.
Leanpath finds that foodservice operations typically waste between 4% and 10% of food purchases (pre-consumer food waste), with another 3-7% in consumer plate waste (post-consumer food waste). By tracking each case of food waste with Leanpath’s measurement tools, operators capture critical data related to the type and amount of food being wasted, the source, the reason for the waste (e.g. overproduction, spoilage, trim, quality error), the disposition of each transaction (e.g. donation, compost, landfill), the cost of each transaction in financial and environmental terms, and more. The data feed a robust analytics platform which provides actionable insights for chefs, coupled with behavior change tools and culinary coaching, enabling them to make operational changes to reduce waste in the immediate term and to prevent its recurrence going forward.
Operating in over 4,000 locations and roughly 50 countries, Leanpath typically cuts food waste in half in foodservice operations, reducing food purchases by 2-6% with a return on investment (ROI) of two- to sevenfold. The tracking and measurement process makes food waste visible, engaging frontline foodservice workers and driving behavior change while creating a culture of food waste prevention. The reliability of the process has allowed major food service organizations to make public commitments to halving food waste in their operations and to track progress toward their respective goals, while also educating their patrons on the value of food waste reduction. To date, Leanpath has prevented the occurrence of about 150 million pounds of food waste across its global platform.
Fourth, scaling food waste reduction requires urgency, and authentic leadership is needed to meet the gravity of the food waste challenge. Let’s continue with the foodservice example.
The foodservice space is unique in several ways. Large foodservice organizations serve thousands, and in some cases millions of meals daily. Therefore cutting food waste in such operations has real impact. But there are challenges. Food service operations are incredibly busy, and managers are continually focused on meeting service expectations in tight operating windows each day. Time to engage on new initiatives such as food waste prevention is limited. As with any change initiative, skepticism and resistance can be real, so champions are needed. In addition, at the site level there is often a tactical risk management mindset with the overriding priority being to never run out of food. As a result, it is not unusual for foodservice operations to routinely waste food through overproduction as a hedge against running out of food – often with items that are perceived as inexpensive, such as vegetables and fruit.
There can be cost objections as well, or concerns over process time. In general, proof points are very high for a proven process with triple bottom line impact. Some operators have an initial perception that food waste tracking is hard and expensive. Leanpath flips that narrative, noting that food waste tracking is easy, and with significant ROI it is an investment in savings. Further, the process provides an inspirational element by connecting frontline workers to the food waste challenge. It should be noted that ReFED’s Insights Engine ranks food waste tracking as the highest leverage prevention effort.
Beyond food service operations, Leanpath’s measurement-focused tools, process, and reporting capabilities are applicable to other segments in the food sector as well.
To sum, a 2023 report from UN Secretary General António Guterres regarding the UN Food Systems Summit+2 titled, ‘Making Food Systems Work for People and Planet,’ notes that “[t]he transformation of food systems entails profound shifts across production, storage, consumption, and disposal of food,” underscoring these shifts’ “potential to generate multiplier effects, acting as catalysts for broader transformation across multiple systems and SDGs.” “By reimagining and redesigning our food systems, we can address pressing challenges and unlock opportunities for progress in other areas,” it concludes.
Halving global food waste as per SDG target 12.3 is an essential pillar in the transformation effort to achieve a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable food system.
Food waste is the untapped multiplier that can be unlocked to drive progress across multiple SDGs, and we know how to do it.
Properly valuing food, shifting from a culture of abundance to a culture of responsibility, continuing to raise awareness of the scope and scale of global food waste, advancing educational efforts, and supporting innovation initiatives for food waste reduction – particularly with a focus on preventing the occurrence of food waste – are key steps toward advancing progress on target 12.3 and unleashing the untapped multiplier in food waste reduction.
Leadership is needed among food organizations to make bold commitments on food waste reduction, to align team members behind those commitments, and to report on progress transparently.
Lastly, there is a larger element of political will needed here. The disconnect between global food waste and hunger is stark, and immoral, and the environmental consequences of food waste are severe. Quite simply, we need to demonstrate that we care about humanity and the state of the planet. Food waste is indeed one of the world’s dumbest problems. Getting behind food waste reduction should not be controversial, and the multiplier effect is clear.
We are in need of urgent, global collaborative action on food waste reduction to match the scale of the challenge. Food waste is the untapped multiplier to transform the global food system. It is time to unleash it to accelerate progress toward the SDGs.
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Steven M. Finn is Penn LPS Affiliated Faculty, Organizational Dynamics, and Vice President of Sustainability and Public Affairs, Leanpath.
This article was written for Perry World House’s 2025 Conference, ‘Feeding a Climate Changed World.’ This meeting was made possible in part by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The views expressed are solely the author’s and do not reflect those of Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvania, or the Carnegie Corporation of New York.