Food banks across the world are rescuing food from farmers before it gets thrown out, helping people in need and reducing planet-warming pollution.
Scientific American summarized The Global Foodbanking Network's annual impact report, which said its member organizations provided 1.7 billion meals to more than 40 million people in 2023.
Much of this was recovered from farms or wholesale produce markets. The organization estimates that salvaging all of this food — which would likely have ended up in landfills — mitigated approximately 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Food waste warms the planet because it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as it decomposes. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 58% of methane emissions from U.S. landfills come from food waste.
Humans could reduce our planet-warming pollution by 6-8% just by ending food waste, the World Wildlife Fund says.
This is critically important, as rising global temperatures threaten communities because of more frequent and intense storms, increased heat waves, suffocating droughts, and other consequences. For instance, devastating fires scorched the Amazon region in early 2024 as a result of ongoing drought, blanketing some nearby communities in dangerous smoke.
Plus, historic flooding is becoming more common — for instance, parts of the northeastern United States experienced a once-in-a-1,000-year rain event in August 2024, causing flash flooding and a loss of human life.
Meanwhile, reducing food waste helps us address a myriad of additional problems, according to the NRDC. For instance, it reduces the amount of cropland we need to feed the planet to preserve wildlife habitats. Plus, underserved communities face the most extreme consequences of a warming planet, so reducing food waste will increase environmental equity.
"Reducing food loss and waste offers an opportunity to address many of our world's existential challenges, including combating the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, improving environmental health protections, and fighting racial injustice," the organization states on its website.
"There is always food that is unnecessarily wasted," Emily Broad Leib, the founding director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, told Scientific American, adding, "there is ongoing need for scaling up food banks and food-recovery operations."
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