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Food Waste: A Low-Hanging Fruit for Methane Reductions
This blog is modified from the Wilson Center-OSU “Cultivating US and Chinese Climate Leadership on Food and Agriculture Roadmap” publication.
“Waste is something that most of us just don’t see,” stressed Pete Pearson, Senior Director, Food Loss and Waste, WWF, at a recent Wilson Center event. Though people are “conditioned” to be blind to food waste, continued Pearson, this not-so-invisible problem wastes a third of food grown around the world. When this wasted food decomposes, it emits methane, accounting for 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
As food superpowers in production and trade, China and the United States lead in food loss and waste—ranking first and third, respectively. From 2014 to 2018, 27% of China’s food was lost or wasted, emitting an average of 464 million tons of CO2e. The United States wastes and loses 40% of the food it produces each year, which emits 170 million metric tons of GHG (equal to 42 coal-fired power plants).
This shared status has significant implications, as reducing food waste could be a climate solution with a big punch. Both countries have taken some national action, but regional and local governments, businesses, and NGOs lead in this space in their own nations and at global climate talks.
In 2022, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food assessed the food and climate actions of 14 countries on their National Determined Contributions (NDCs). Neither the United States nor China had NDCs with comprehensive efforts to mitigate food loss and waste. Food waste is a low-hanging fruit for the two countries to share lessons on policies and best practices.
US-China food waste infographic from Wilson Center China Environment Forum’s recent publication “Cultivating US and Chinese Climate Leadership on Food and Agriculture: A Roadmap for Collaboration”
Trends in US Food Waste Action
In 2011 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the “Food Recovery Challenge,” one of the earliest national actions on food waste. Over the next decade, 600+ companies, restaurants, and universities diverted over 5.5 million tons of food from landfills and incinerators. The 2016 US Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions, a collaboration between the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and EPA, aimed to reduce US businesses’ food loss and waste by 50% by 2030.
The Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allocates $5 billion for Greenhouse Gas Planning, supporting community programs to tackle food waste reduction. It also funds USDA conservation programs to support and incentivize organic waste reduction, composting programs, and farm infrastructure.
In 2017, over 33 bills addressing food waste were introduced in 12 states. Ten of these states and the District of Columbia offered tax incentives for food donations to food banks. Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law, unanimously passed in 2012, later became a full ban on disposing food waste in landfills in 2020. Food donations in Vermont have grown by 40%. Now other states are also moving to adopt similar bans.
NGOs and businesses are also engaged. The Natural Resources Defense Council developed the Save the Food campaign, educating consumers and policymakers on reducing home food waste. WWF and ReFED established the Pacific Coast Food Waste Food Waste Commitment and are collaborating with businesses and state governments to halve food waste by 2030. Feeding America partnered with food manufacturers, grocery stores, and restaurants to rescue 3.6 billion pounds of groceries in 2022. Food companies including Danone, Starbucks, and others have joined the Farm Powered Food Alliance, driving the use of aerobic digestion to generate renewable energy from food waste.
The United States and China can also share practices and regulations to help safely turn food waste into animal feed. Though the practice has stalled due to animal disease concerns, it holds great promise as a method to use food waste productively.
Trends in Chinese Food Waste Policies, Plans and Programs
China is one of the few countries in the world to implement a law on food waste. The April 2021 PRC Law Against Food Waste created heavy fines targeting restaurants—China’s biggest food waste culprits. The law marks a shift away from voluntary food waste actions to a more forceful regulatory approach.
China’s initial push on food waste began with the government’s 2013 Clean Your Plate Campaign encouraging officials and the public to eliminate food waste at extravagant feasts and receptions. A 2020 “2.0” version of this campaign issued guidelines urging restaurants to use smaller dishes and remove minimum order charges. Later that year, Solid Waste Law Amendments banned excessive food waste in restaurants, codifying the Clean Your Plate campaign into law.
In 2017, Chinese cities were also mandated to mitigate methane emissions from food waste with compost and anaerobic digesters for electricity generation, sparking community composting movements. On the production side, both the 2020 14th Five-Year Plan on agriculture and the 2021 regulation on grain circularity target reductions in grain loss on farms through better storage and transportation systems for grain.
Businesses have also innovated to reduce food waste. Hotmaxx, a Chinese discount grocery store, sold over 300 million near-expired food items in 2021, preventing over 70,000 tons of food waste and 140,000 tons of carbon emissions. The city of Shenzhen mobilized 45 enterprises to donate surplus food to local food banks through an app, saving 43 tons of food and 86 tons of GHG emissions in 2023. Major retailers, like Walmart China, partnered with the China Food Bank network in 2021 to set food safety standards and models for surplus food donation.
Chinese and international NGOs are taking innovative approaches to curb food waste. At a Wilson Center webinar, Shiyang Li, general manager of RARE China Center for Behavior, discussed the social enterprise’s collaboration with WWF-Beijing to change employee behaviors at restaurants. Changing employee behavior required “tackling emotions, helping them understand why they’re doing it, and reducing barriers at work,” said Li. With creative tools such as zero-waste menus, educational games, and an app that measures and tracks kitchen waste, they found that employees were “really excited” to reduce food waste at their work.
Jennifer Nguyen is the Program Coordinator for the China Environment Forum and is the managing editor for the China Environment Forum’s column on New Security Beat.
Dr. Jennifer L. Turner has been the Director of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum for 24 years. She has led in the creation of climate, energy, and other environmental programming. She was the producer of Choke Point: China, the CEF-Circle of Blue multimedia reporting project 2010-2018. The Choke Point: China reporting helped inform the creation of the Water-Energy Technology Program under the 2014 US-China bilateral climate agreement.
Dr. Karen Mancl is a Professor of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Water Quality at the Ohio State University where she has published over 50 journal articles and 80 extension publications on rural infrastructure and outreach initiatives. She is currently a 2023-24 Wilson Center Policy Scholar pursuing a research project entitled Planting the Seed for Renewed Agricultural Collaboration Between the United States and China.
Sources: Business Wire, Earth.Org, EPA, Feeding America, Food and Agriculture Organization of UN, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Global Times, Inewsweek.cn, Journal of Consumer Policy, Lishui Institute of Ecological Environment Nanjing University, Nature, NRDC, Project Drawdown, Rare, ReFED, Save The Food, sznews, The State Council of PRC, TheWorld, USDA, Vermont Government.
Top Photo Credit: Courtesy of Rare China Center for Behavior
Infographic Credit: Kerrin Cuison and Kathy Butterfield and originally published in Wilson Center-OSU “Cultivating US and Chinese Climate Leadership on Food and Agriculture Roadmap” publication.