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That’s the bad news.
The good news is that cities are coming up with solutions. Because most municipalities run their own sanitation systems, said Yvette Cabrera, deputy food waste director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, they’re “uniquely positioned to tackle the problem.”
Here are three main strategies cities are using.
Target waste
Those sanitation systems give cities a lot of control over what happens to discarded food, and some are cracking down on waste.
Seoul, South Korea, for example, charges a fee for food waste. Families pay by weight. At recycling sites, the waste is processed: Part is used for biofuels, while some is turned into fertilizer to help urban farms. The city also has over 6,000 automated bins where residents can weigh their food waste and pay their fees, according to the World Economic Forum.
Seoul now recycles 95 percent of its food waste, up from less than 2 percent in 1995.
A version of that was tried in the United States in 2015, when Seattle introduced an anti-waste program that, among other things, made it illegal to toss out food. A year later, a judge tossed out the measure’s enforcement provision when she ruled that trash collectors snooping in garbage for edible morsels was unconstitutional.
The law is still on the books, though, and it appears to have had an effect. For example, the program included an education campaign that focused on waste reduction, smarter shopping and composting. The right kind of food composting system produces lower emissions than a similar volume of food in a landfill, and you get something useful from composting: fertilizer.
Now, nearly 50 percent of food waste gets composted, according to Hans Van Dusen, the city’s solid waste contracts manager. And, waste sent to landfills is at a record low of 0.81 pounds per person per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We are so disconnected from where our food comes from, we don’t think about the resources that take to get it to us,” said Veronica Fincher, a senior waste prevention program manager in Seattle. “We want to help people understand those impacts.”
For an example of what could happen if more cities tackled food waste, look to France. National law there requires large supermarkets to donate, rather than throw away, food that is still edible — a measure that has sharply increased food donations to charities, according to the government.
Businesses are key
Cities tend to have lots of restaurants and grocery stores, and that presents a huge opportunity to reduce food waste.
One of the leaders in working with supermarkets and chefs is New York City, which runs the largest composting program in the country. It’s part of a multimillion-dollar program to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions by turning food scraps and yard waste into compost and, soon, clean energy. The goal is to get the city to zero waste by 2030.
In addition to the composting program, the city runs a robust online food donation portal, food waste fairs and waste-reduction challenges that recognize successful efforts by restaurants and supermarkets.
As of now, the city wastes four million tons of food a year. Of that, 500,000 tons come from restaurants. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation estimates that cutting commercial food waste by 5 percent would save more than 120,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year.
“Baby steps so far, but we want to be sure that restaurants have the tools to do well,” said the city’s sanitation commissioner, Kathryn Garcia. “There are some seriously committed chefs out there to ensuring that nothing gets wasted.”
Other cities have also introduced curbside recycling and incrementally expanded their food waste regulation, like Los Angeles, Denver and Baltimore, which are all setting public goals to decrease waste, expand curbside composting and work with chefs and restaurants to raise awareness about food waste reduction.
Redistribute the surplus
So, some cities are saving a lot of food from the landfill. Some goes to the compost bin. Some, though, is still edible. What to do with it?
That’s where food rescue programs come into the picture. Strictly speaking, these are not climate programs. But think of them as an added bonus: Cities can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the needy.
Milan, Italy has been a global leader in the rescue movement since 2015. That year, 15 tons of food was given to homeless people in just a few weeks when the chef Massimo Bottura helped organize an anti-waste campaign. Since then, the city has written the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international food waste protocol for cities, and led a charge that helped to get the national government to pass food waste legislation.
According to its organizers, the food policy pact has been signed by 207 cities from around the world with a total of around 450 million inhabitants.
It shows how a local initiative can take off, and how cities can have an impact.
“Once you tell people they can’t throw food away, they start making different, creative decisions with it,” said Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic.
An American pledge at global climate talks
The second and final week of United Nations climate change talks in Madrid opened with a dash of optimism from the United States as a broad coalition of states, cities and businesses made a case that it could put a significant dent in planet-warming emissions without federal help.
Delivering the news was Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire and former mayor of New York City who is now running for president. Mr. Bloomberg co-founded the coalition, America’s Pledge, along with Gov. Jerry Brown of California. Its purpose is to help the United States stick to the goals of the Paris climate agreement despite President Trump’s plan to abandon the pact.
“The reason I am here in Madrid is really pretty simple,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I am here because no one from the White House is here.”
A coalition report, issued this week and titled “Accelerating America’s Pledge,” found that, even without federal action, efforts to cut greenhouse gasses by the members of the group could have a significant impact.
Critically, the report found that there’s still time for the United States to hit net-zero emissions by midcentury. A recent United Nations report said countries would need to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
The pledge authors project that with expanded local action, combined with a comprehensive national strategy that includes clean energy legislation and policies to complete the phaseout of coal, the United States could reduce its emissions 49 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Left unsaid in the report, but explicitly noted by Mr. Bloomberg in a touch of electioneering, was that such national action would require an administration that prioritizes climate change.
“Beating climate change won’t require a miracle, it won’t require limitless resources,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It will require leadership and common sense.”
Under the rules of the Paris Agreement, the United States will remain a party to the accord until Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the presidential election.
