Food Loss & Waste: It’s Everywhere in the Supply Chain
Food loss and waste (FLW) happens on every-level in the supply chain. The impacts of FLW are devastating and, thankfully, can be avoided through swift and direct action on every level.
Food loss and waste (FLW) happens everywhere from farm to fork, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. An estimated $600 billion worth of food is lost globally during or just after harvest, according to a recent McKinsey & Company report.1 In the U.S., about 30% of surplus food in grocery stores goes into landfills, causing a loss of $16 billion a year, according to a recent study from Coresight Research.2 Overall, Americans waste an average of 80 billion pounds of food per year, amounting to a value of approximately $161 billion, according to the Center for Nutrition Studies.3 Based on its data, Coresight did the math and found that American consumers waste $218 billion’s worth of food annually—or an average of $1,600 in produce per household.
No matter the data source (e.g., UN’s FAO, U.S. Department of Agriculture, McKinsey, Coresight), and while the numbers may not all perfectly align, it’s easily apparent that FLW is too high. What it comes down to is that 33% to 40% of the world’s food is lost or wasted every year, yet one in nine of the world’s population can’t get enough to eat—that’s equivalent to 800 million suffering from hunger.