Garbage Galore

A new study reveals that American households throw away some 470 pounds of food per year.

Most people don't give a second thought to the half eaten dinner that finds its way to the trash, or the expired milk that's poured down the drain when it starts to smell funny. But to Tim Jones, a researcher at the University of Arizona's Contemporary Archaeology Project, this kind of garbage is fascinating stuff. In fact, Jones and his students spent the past year sifting through the garbage of 200 American families for the express purpose of finding out how much edible or once edible food gets thrown out each day.

Jones's study is part of a partnership with the US Department of Agriculture designed to find out how much food is lost on its journey from the farm to supermarkets, restaurants, homes, and eventually, to our bellies. Previous studies estimated that Americans tossed about 150 pounds per household per year, but these figures are 25 years out of date, and researchers suspected that the real number may be higher.

Learning how much food people throw away each day sounds easy – just ask them, right? Not so fast, says Jones. "The everyday kinds of behaviors that we do over and over again are not well remembered," he says, and most people aren't even fully conscious of repeated behaviors like preparing and serving food. So rather than depending on self-reported behavior, Jones and his researchers needed a way to actually measure the amount of food that ends up in the garbage.

To do so, the team rounded up families in Delaware and Arizona and interviewed them about their eating habits, collected grocery receipts, and then dug through their trash to catalogue and weigh every last lima bean, chicken nugget, and slice of cake that ended up in the garbage.

The results, Jones says, were eye-opening. "Some people believe that you cannot really store food safely in the fridge. Anything that's left over automatically gets thrown in the trash," says Jones. "Then there are households, where, well, as long as it's not gooey or furry, you can eat it. It you take a bite and it tastes OK, you can eat it." Overall, the researchers found that the average family throws away 1.28 pounds of food per day, for an annual total of 470 pounds per household, or 14 percent of all food brought into the house. That's three times the amount previously estimated – and Jones expects the number the climb when researchers add in food that's washed down the garbage disposal or fed to the family dog.

Why do people throw away so much food? The reasons, says Jones, are varied. Some people practice poor planning, and some are influenced by the perception of what they should be eating. "People think oh, I should eat well, so they buy all these fruits and vegetables," Jones says. "Then they come home at 10:00 after work and pull out a frozen dinner." By the time the weekend rolls around and people have time to cook, the vegetables have turned to mush. In part because of this "guilt buying" Jones says, people end up throwing away about a third of the fruits and vegetables they buy.

Other factors that affect food loss are warehouse stores that encourage customers to buy in bulk, and moving habits. Jones found, for instance, that low-income families, who tend to move a lot, throw out the largest amounts of packaged food.

Jones agrees. "The big cost of food loss is environmental," he says. "Growing stuff on a farm reduces the productivity of the land. You have to use pesticides that cause more pollution...Loss of that food means losses of nutrients out in the fields."

CONTACTS

Dr. Timothy W. Jones: Anthropologist
Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
Phone: (520) 626-7624

LINKS

The Osgood File

WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York City features an archive of transcripts of stories broadcast on The Osgood File.

Information on the food loss study

United States Department of Agriculture

The University of Arizona garbage study homepage.

The Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology

USDA Food and Rural Economics division

Waste management studies and policy recommendations from the Reason Public Policy Institute.

Case studies in California's attempts at food scrap waste reduction.

ACFnewsource provides links to sites maintained by other organizations for informational purposes only. ACFnewsource has no responsibility for the accuracy of the content of any Web site to which a link is provided. The groups included on the list do not necessarily reflect the views of ACFnewsource.

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