Venture capitalists seem to support that argument, with companies like Hungry Harvest, Food Maven, and Imperfect Produce raising over $125 million in 2018. Their proposition is that food that looks bad doesn’t sell and ends up being thrown away as waste. Ugly produce startups suggest that a large portion of food waste is caused by food getting thrown out because of deformities. The situation is sadly made worse by the public’s lack of understanding of how the food supply chain works. The ugly produce trend may be helping a few farms and businesses flourish, but they hardly make a dent in reducing the amount of food going into landfills. Once consumer-facing businesses like groceries and restaurants are added into the mix, the combined waste comes to more than 80% of the total food waste.Ĭontrary to information peddled by ugly-produce proponents, less than 20% of food waste happens at farms and packinghouses. An estimated 150,000 tons of food is thrown away by US households every day! This figure translates to 43% of annual food waste, making it the single-largest contributor to this issue. What’s more troubling is that the most significant source of this food waste happens in our own homes. As all this happens, more than 43 million Americans are considered to be food insecure. Further, this makes landfills the third-largest contributor of methane in the United States.

This amount of waste has some dire impacts on climate, resource conservation, and also – food security.įood that would otherwise have been used to feed hungry families is sent off to landfills, where it breaks down to methane, contributing to climate change. That translates to 63 million tons of food waste every year. The food waste crisis is severe, with about 30 – 40% of the food supply going to waste every year, according to the USDA. In the US alone, about $218 billion is spent on food that never reaches consumers and is never eaten by anyone.

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