The war on food waste is a waste of time

Food waste is frequently articulated as an environmental crisis, a claim that rests on two arguments. The first is clearly climate-oriented: When food waste ends up in a landfill, it rots and produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas that warms the planet. In this argument, households are largely to blame, and the solutions put forward to address h... See more

This creative accounting suggests that wasting less food would somehow undo all of the harms of food production. But the nutrient cycle does not care whether or not you clean your plate. All the environmental impacts that brought that meal into being are done deals; in the parlance of introductory economics, they are “sunk costs.” In focusing so mu... See more

Much like paper straws or canvas totes, though, well-meaning small changes miss the forest of structural change for the trees of lifestyle tweaking. The object of thrown-away food bears scrutiny, even though it is the way we dispose of food — mostly dumping it in landfills — that generates methane emissions. Large-scale composting or biogas generat... See more