Reducing wasted food in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Context

In November 2019, the City Council of Ann Arbor, Michigan passed Resolution 19-2103: A Resolution in Support of Creating a Plan to Achieve Ann Arbor Community-Wide Climate Neutrality by 2030. Then, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the City’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation (OSI) completed a comprehensive participatory planning process in the spring of 2020. The result is a living plan for achieving a just transition to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030. Several links and documents related to this A²Zero Climate Action Plan are available at:

• Carbon neutrality homepage: www.a2gov.org/departments/sustainability/Carbon-Neutrality/Pages/default.aspx
• Brief A²Zero Plan overview: www.a2gov.org/departments/sustainability/Documents/A2ZERO-Sector-FactSheet_Implementation.pdf
• Version 4.0 of A²Zero Plan: www.a2gov.org/departments/sustainability/Documents/A2Zero%20Climate%20Action%20Plan%20_4.0.pdf

​The A²Zero Plan is centered on seven overarching strategies:

1. Powering our electrical grid with 100% renewable energy.
2. Switching appliances and vehicles from gasoline, diesel, propane, coal, and natural gas to electric.
3. Significantly improving the energy efficiency of our homes, businesses, schools, places of worship, recreational sites, and government facilities.
4. Reducing the miles we travel in our vehicles by at least 50%.
5. Changing the way we purchase, use, reuse, and dispose of materials.
6. Enhancing the resilience of our people, our neighborhoods, and our community.
7. Cross-cutting initiatives such as equity, engagement, and reporting.

What the A²Zero plan is doing about wasted food

Strategy 5 includes a focus on reducing wasted food and composting whatever food is left over.  Reducing wasted food is a triple win: good for the environment, for the economy, and for the community. However, we keep throwing away perfectly good food. More details on the A²Zero focus on a circular food provisioning system can be found at their sustainable food programs page.

Example project: In 2021, a team of A²Zero Climate Ambassadors conducted a pilot project at several multi-family housing sites around the city of Ann Arbor. The focus was on reducing wasted food in households and on composting any remaining food waste on-site. The pilot project engaged with the households, first to educate about wasted food and then to launch a behavior change effort. Whenever possible, the project collaborated with a site’s existing gardening or sustainability committee(s). The pilot project followed the US EPA Implementation Guide and Toolkit (EPA 2016) and their Food Recovery Hierarchy (EPA 2021), and the National Academies of Sciences National Strategy to Reduce Food Waste at the Consumer Level (NASEM 2020). It also built upon successful programs in other communities.

Why focus on wasted food

Almost a third of the food produced for human consumption goes to waste. If wasted food were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. The environmental and social impacts are huge and growing. While households account for over half of this wasted food, they also can take immediate steps that make a difference in three important areas:

(1) Environment: We are throwing away much more than food. Food has consumed many resources long before it arrives on our table. After being served, more food reaches landfills and combustion facilities than any other single material in our everyday trash. Wasting food is particularly bad for the climate crisis since every stage of the field-to-table chain emits greenhouse gases. Reducing wasted food does great things for the environment:

• Saves resources – Wasted food wastes the water, gasoline, energy, labor, pesticides, land, and fertilizers used to make the food.
• Reduces methane from landfills – When food goes to the landfill, it is similar to tying food in a plastic bag. The nutrients in the food never return to the soil. The wasted food rots and produces methane gas, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas.
• Returns nutrients to the soil – If you cannot prevent, reduce or donate wasted food, you can compost. By sending food scraps to a composting facility instead of to a landfill or composting at home, you are helping make healthy soils. Properly composted wasted food and yard waste improves soil health and structure, improves water retention, supports native plants, and reduces the need for fertilizers and pesticides.

(2) Economy: When we waste food, we are not just creating a problem; we are also missing an opportunity to save businesses and consumers money:

• Spend less – If we can find ways to prevent waste in the first place, we spend less by buying only the food we use. Preventing wasted food can also reduce energy and labor costs associated with throwing away good food.
• Receive tax benefits by donating – If we donate healthy, safe, and edible food to hungry people, we may be able to claim a tax benefit. The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act protects food donors from liability.

(3) Community: Preventing wasted food and recovering wholesome, nutritious food can help our community:

• Feed people, not landfills – Instead of feeding landfills, we should be feeding people in our communities by donating foods to different local organizations including Food Gatherers (www.foodgatherers.org).
• Create job opportunities – Recovering and recycling wasted food through donation, salvaging, processing, industrial reuse, and composting strengthens infrastructure, creates jobs, and supports our local economy.
• Feed the world – The UN predicts that by eliminating food loss and wasted food we would have enough food to feed all the chronically undernourished. We would not have to increase food production or put additional pressure on our natural resources to do so.

Wasted food: What it is and where it comes from

The term “wasted food” describes food that was not used for its intended purpose and is managed in a variety of ways, such as donation to feed people, creation of animal feed, composting, anaerobic digestion, or sending to landfills. Examples include unsold food from retail stores; plate waste, uneaten prepared food, or kitchen trimmings from restaurants, cafeterias, and households; or by-products from food and beverage processing facilities. The EPA uses the overarching term “wasted food” instead of “food waste” for food that was not used for its intended purpose because it conveys that a valuable resource is being wasted, whereas “food waste” implies that the food no longer has value and is managed as waste. The EPA uses the following definitions:

• Excess food refers to food that is recovered and donated to feed people.
• Food waste refers to food such as plate waste (i.e., food served but not eaten), spoiled food, or inedible peels and rinds fed to animals, to be composted, or to be land-filled or combusted with energy recovery.
• Food loss refers to unused product from the agricultural sector, such as unharvested crops.

Preferred strategies for reducing wasted food

The best approach to reducing food loss and waste is not to create it in the first place.  EPA encourages anyone managing wasted food to reference the Wasted Food Scale (Figure 1). When better strategies are no longer feasible, then the food left over should be put to beneficial use such as composted or sent to be broken down through anaerobic digestion.

Figure 1 – Wasted Food Scale (EPA 2023)

References

EPA (2023) Wasted food scale. Retrieved from: https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/wasted-food-scale

EPA (2016) Food: Too good to waste implementation guide and toolkit . Retrieved from: https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-too-good-waste-implementation-guide-and-toolkit

NASEM (2020) A national strategy to reduce food waste at the consumer level. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.17226/25876

Raymond De Young
School for Environment and Sustainability
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Updated: September 26, 2024

Copyright © 2024 Raymond De Young, All Rights Reserved.