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- [00:10]
A
Hello and welcome to the Food waste edition of Sleep Money Food, our little miniseries on the economics of food. We are this week going to be talking not just about food waste, frankly, but also just about the whole supply chain of the food system and the kind of damage it can do to the environment. And we have Austin Brunjaski, who has written and researched this for years. And we are going to talk about how easy it is to buy less food to eat more of what we buy, and whether any of that really makes a difference. All that coming up on Slate Money Food. Okay, so we're going to talk about food waste. Austin, tell me who you are and what you know about this subject.
- [01:05]
B
So I am a writer and a researcher with a background in food systems. I live in New Haven, Connecticut, where I'm also involved in a number of community based food systems efforts, including our Food Policy Council. My interest and fascination with food waste came about as a student of food systems and was the topic of my graduate school work.
- [01:30]
A
Okay, so let's start with some of the things that we know about food waste, which is often presented in sexy infographics. This seems to be one of the most infographic friendly subjects in the world completely. And the things that we know is that we throw out a bunch of perfectly good food, we being both families and restaurants, and that this is bad on multiple levels. It's bad for the planet, it's bad for our budgets. Like what is the point of spending good money on food if you're just going to throw it out? It's bad for things like creating large numbers of rats on the street of New York because the rats love to eat all of the food in the garbage bags. There's any number of reasons why this is bad. And the obvious solution to this is that we should just stop throwing it out and start eating it instead. This is easy, right?
- [02:24]
B
So that's what I think. That's what I think we're led to believe. And that's what I think is the dominant narrative out there. I think it is a narrative that I was certainly enrolled into and very interested in and very concerned with. I first sort of got engaged with the issue of food waste while working at a legal clinic that focuses on thinking about how law and policy can reduce this massive food waste problem. And sort of over the course of thinking about why is it that this issue is seemingly so common sense and is seemingly so obvious. I wanted to wonder, like, who are the losers in this supposedly win, win, win, people, planet property, profit problem, diagnosis. And so a Lot of what I write about is sort of trying to poke holes into this crystallization of the problem of food waste.
- [03:30]
A
So let's start with that. Let's start with a bit of hole poking, and let's start on just a really basic kind of household finance level. If I have a smaller fridge and I go shopping more frequently, and I take care to eat all of the food that I buy and not waste the food that I buy, and I pay less attention to meaningless expiration dates and I pay more attention to my nose in terms of trying to work out whether food is good or bad. Is there any hole to be poked in that? It seems to me that saves me money and it also reduces food waste. Is there a hole to be poked in that part of the spectrum?
- [04:16]
B
Not necessarily. I think in writing about these issues and thinking about my own sort of food and eating practices, Right. Like I do not relish in throwing away food that I could have eaten earlier that week, for example. I think where things do get sort of tricky is when we start to link, I use the phrase more judicious household practices or more belabored efforts to reduce our own personal throwing away of food to broader environmental or public health or social claims that our own individual actions may not actually realize or affect that much.
- [05:03]
A
Okay, so let's. Let's come to those in a second. But let me just stick with the individual household for a bit. We had an earlier episode in this series about Costco. Is Costco part of the problem here? The stores like Costco, encourage people to buy too much food. And when people buy too much food, one of the consequences of that is that they waste food. Is Costco a bad thing from a food waste perspective?
- [05:32]
B
I guess I'm not sure if that's even the right question to be asking. I think the most radical argument that I want to try to make in my piece in the outline is that of all of the problems we could be thinking about in terms of how our food systems are structured, being so concerned with that so much food gets thrown away in this country is maybe not as important as thinking about things that affect people's lives or that generate injustices within our food system. So there are these very interesting questions to be had about who is culpable. Is it individuals not being scrappy enough, or is it places like Costco who allow us to buy so much food? But I sort of think it's beside the point.
- [06:19]
A
So what is the big point here? Are you saying that there are things that are more important than food? Waste or are you saying that we're thinking about food waste in the wrong way?
- [06:28]
B
I think I'm leaning more towards the former and not the latter. And I don't deny the material reality that in the United States and around the world, more food is grown or produced or moves along supply chains than is eaten. The numbers back that up. What I am interested in is both who is responsible, like who are the actors responsible for making this issue as sexy as it has become, who has been sort of manufacturing the conversation such that it has gotten as much attention as it has, and who benefits when the problem is seen as this oftentimes more technical problem of how do we waste less food. What's interesting to me too is how this problem becomes one of climate change and environmental concerns on one hand and social concerns around food insecurity on the other. And so in sort of poking holes in the more sort of like halo effect associations that get linked to food waste. How might a corporation benefit when the problem of both wastes, climate and hunger are seen as technical problems that we might affiliate with food waste? And what other potentially richer problem diagnoses get lost when food waste gets all the attention?
- [07:56]
A
Is your theory basically that there's a kind of zero sum game of social justice in some level and that the more attention we pay to food waste, the less attention we pay to things that are possibly more urgent or more important?
- [08:09]
B
Yes, and I don't think think it's so cut and dry as to be a zero sum game. But if all of the resources and the human power and the philanthropic dollars and venture capital funding, all of the resources that are getting poured into solving this very solvable, allegedly problem of food waste. What if those all went somewhere else?
- [08:35]
A
So let's dig into that. Like number one, give me an example of how big the sort of food waste industrial complex is. Like, you seem to be a little bit upset that people are spending so much attention talking about this and thinking about this and throwing philanthropic money at this problem. Like, how big is that? Like, especially compared to the sheer size of food and agriculture in the economy, how much of that is, is, is devoted to trying to tackle the problem, problem of food waste. And to ask the question which you asked earlier, who is benefiting from all of the money and attention that is being paid to this food waste issue?
- [09:17]
B
Yeah. So I think I'll be candid. I haven't done the nitty gritty quantitative work to know with precise percentages what proportion of the sort of food policy or broader academic, even food systems Conversation is about food waste. But there has been reporting in places like Forbes that hundreds of millions of dollars of philanthropic money has gone into food waste research. A lot of the major anti hunger organizations and networks in the US have sort of like in house food waste job titles or really foreground this food waste conversation in their marketing materials. So I would suggest that corporate actors in particular are benefiting from a lot of the attention the food conversations, attention on food waste specifically. One example is a lot of supermarkets have hopped on the food waste bandwagon, right? Not only are they saying that they are doing good by the environment and reporting in their sustainability reports that they're reducing food waste along their supply chains, but they're also making claims that they're feeding their communities by redistributing food that doesn't get sold to local food banks, for example.
- [10:45]
A
So I think there are two different things you're saying here, and I want to sort of tease them apart. One is that supermarkets should be doing more than they're doing. You know, there's always more you can do and we can agree on that. The second is that there's a hole in the food waste argument to be poked. And I'm particularly interested in that. What is the fallacy of the food waste argument when Kroger says it's trying to reduce food waste, or even better, it's succeeding in reducing food waste? Is there anything inside the four corners of that argument that is fallacious or that you can be poking holes in?
- [11:26]
B
There are a couple of things I want to say to that. The first is that is again, a sort of like disclaimer that I think, you know, to reduce food waste, to reduce food going into a landfill is better than not trying to do that at all. And I say that because when food enters the waste stream and ends up in a landfill, it digests anaerobically and produces methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas that then contributes to climate change. I think the World Wildlife Fund uses the stat that about 11% of greenhouse gas emissions, probably of those attributed to the food system, come from food waste. And then there's a wide range of what percentage of emissions globally come from food production and food systems. But it's anywhere from like a third to half of worldwide emissions, depending on who you ask. So I say that, right? To say that 11% of emissions attributable to food waste is significant. But I think there are also potential, like it's not the only thing, right? And there are other things that I think other approaches to addressing the intersection of climate and food that get lost when the concentration is entirely on.
- [12:46]
A
So you're not really poking holes in that 11% in the argument. The 11% is like low hanging fruit here. You're just saying that by concentrating on the 11%, you're ignoring the 89%.
- [12:57]
B
Well, so. And then even within the 11%. Right. I think what's interesting is that the object of scrutiny is like wasted food itself. It is like the current system we have. That is why that 11% exists, why those methane emissions come into being. And that would not necessarily be the case if food, when it entered a waste stream, was composted, or if it was potentially composted at home, or if there were more efforts municipally to have curbside pickup of things like household food scraps, or if major supermarkets or restaurants who do produce a lot of food waste had a way to divert it from landfills, then it could be processed in a way that would not be nearly as environmentally deleterious. But, but in the sort of broader food waste conversation, it's like the fact that so much food goes uneaten rather than where it lands basically is the object of scrutiny. And I think that has a lot of consequences in dreaming up solutions to that problem. And then the last hole I want to poke is that food waste's bigness is what I think gives it so much purchase in policy conversations and everyday conversation as well. And so there's like with that come a lot of sort of statistical means of how, if food waste were a country, it would produce greenhouse gas emissions after China and the US and the way that that figure is derived is to not only account for the greenhouse gas emissions that come from the material decomposition of uneaten food, but it also sort of includes all of the carbon emissions that are attributable to food production and transportation and distribution and consumption across the food supply chain, such that an entire supply chain's worth of carbon emissions are indexed in a single watermelon rind, for example. And I want to argue that actually doing like pickling and eating that watermelon rind does not necessarily undo or negate the environmental impacts of that watermelon across the food supply chain.
- [15:21]
A
Which just leaves me with this kind of weirdly unsatisfied feeling in terms of what, you know, the, what you might call a call to action. Like, on some level, I feel like something I can get my brain around is to say, you know, open up that package of bacon before you throw it out, because it is apparently expired and just Give it a sniff. And if it smells fine, then just eat it because it's fine. And that's something I can do. And that feels good, and it feels like a good thing to do. And I, you know, and if millions of Americans do that at the same time, ultimately that's positive.
- [16:00]
B
Sure.
- [16:01]
A
Versus, on the other hand, you know, a much more inchoate kind of like, well, we should all get involved in electoral politics and electing, you know, people with social justice on their minds who will implement changes to the grand bargain between capital and labor such that workers will blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, yeah, I mean, I. I'm not trying to belittle the importance of being politically active, but the fact is that the vast majority of Americans are not politically active. And for the 99% Americans who are not politically active, it seems that you're saying, well, yeah, you know, anything you happen to do with your fridge or your supermarket is, you know, the one thing you were doing is like, oh, never mind that. The only thing you can do is become one of that 1% of Americans who is politically active.
- [16:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, I struggle with this as well. Right. I think part of the reason that food waste has gotten so much attention is because it is so actionable at the individual level and it feels really good. Right. There's this, like, affective benefit we get when we feel like we're doing our part. Perhaps I would want to suggest that one of the reasons that people aren't as capital p. Politically active as they might be otherwise is because we've been led to believe that these sorts of not necessarily myopic, but just very close to home actions are a replacement for making broader demands of what the systems we live in might look like.
- [17:40]
A
So I had this idea, and I think in a weird way you're agreeing with me that food waste is something that can cut across political divides. It's something which you find Republicans and Democrats both saying the same thing. It's something which can cut across economic divides. It's something which can benefit poor people as much as it can benefit rich people. Like, everyone saves money if they spend less money on food. It's not politically valent in the way that the social justice issues that you're talking about are politically valent. And it doesn't divide us in the way that the issues that you're talking about do divide us politically. And you're saying that that's a sign of how sort of weak tea it is. And I'm looking at it maybe A little bit more hopefully and saying, well, that's a sign that perhaps there might be some kind of consensus here and ability to get something done. And I think the way I just want to finish this is by asking, is even that a little bit too much to hope? Because I've been seeing discussions about food waste for decades and there's been a lot of talk about trying to reduce food waste for decades. And I guess putting all of the political considerations aside and just concentrating on the narrow issue of food waste, have we actually, for all of the consensus and for all of the agreement across the aisle and for all that the big evil corporations have bought into this, have we actually moved the needle on food waste? Is there any indication that even something as even such low hanging, fruitless food waste can be solved? This is a solvable problem. Have we actually made any moves towards solving it?
- [19:38]
B
So that is also something I'm not necessarily as well equipped to answer. I would wager that not very many people are just given the scale and scope of the problem and we didn't get into it. But I find the way in which the numbers we used to understand food waste as a problem in the first place are sort of debatable or there's a lot of boundary drawing involved and judgment calls being made that don't necessarily cast doubt, but at least deserve a little bit more scrutiny. And so I'm really not quite sure. I think if we use the attention that food waste has gotten and the number of startups or the number of nonprofits that have sort of precipitated in the wake of this food waste fervor, as any indication that we are making inroads on this issue, then sure, I think potentially food that would have otherwise been rotting in a landfill made its way somewhere else with relatively marginal environmental and or social benefits. But I just do want to say I think you are correct in my more, I guess, cynical take on the fact that maybe it is a problem or maybe it is time for pausing and scrutinizing that, you know, everyone is so into food waste or that it is such an agreeable thing, you don't have to take a side. So of course it's an easy win.
- [21:10]
A
Sometimes easy wins aren't quite as easy as they look. Austin, thank you for joining us.
- [21:17]
B
Thanks so much.
- [21:26]
A
Sam.