The photos were damning. Entire fields of green beans are ready to be destroyed. Piles of squash left to rot. Fresh milk gushing down the drain. The news coverage drove it home. It was Spring 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic was raging, adding new pressures to the food supply chain. Restaurants and hotels closed and the farms that serviced them were left with surplus—causing millions of gallons of milk, hundreds of thousands of eggs, and entire fields of produce to be discarded.

The New York Times called the situation “dystopian,” and the amount of waste “staggering.” “You had consumers that were so upset about what they saw as this huge amount of waste, they were calling for it to be made illegal,” says Kerri L. Holland, an academic from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and author of Strengthening Canada’s Food System By Reducing Food Waste. What Is Food Waste? While we’ll be using the term “food waste” interchangeably throughout this ebook, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) applies two separate definitions depending on where in the supply chain waste happens: Food loss “occurs from post-harvest up to, but not including, the retail level.

Food waste results “from decisions and actions by retailers, food service providers, and consumers.” The result, though, is ultimately the same. That is, food that never fulfills its purpose: feeding people worldwide. But the coverage soon moved on to other pandemic problems—there were plenty to choose from—and the outrage (or at least much of it) dissipated with it. The problem of food waste, while not forgotten, was no longer top of mind.

Yet just a couple of months later, a new report by the WWF was released, compiling years' worth of data. The results: 2.5 billion tons of food were being lost or wasted every year. Almost double the previous data, the new results showed that 40% of all food produced is wasted per year—numbers that could be called “staggering” by any account. But the public uproar was missing. And among those invested in the food waste crisis, it wasn’t a surprise. A systemic and persistent issue, food waste occurs throughout the supply chain—and it has environmental, human, and economic repercussions felt worldwide.

But there’s good news too: better business decisions, on-the-ground nonprofits, and new technology and innovations are bringing hope that the food waste problem can be solved. This ebook will look at all of that—exploring the ongoing food waste problem, where and how it happens, and what we can all be doing to stop it in its tracks.