This Plucky Little Strawberry Illustrates the Food Waste Crisis

Food waste is a major problem across the globe, and, as CityLab reported last month, a recent report threw the American waste crisis into stark relief by upping the estimated yearly total of discarded food to 63 million tons. The Rethink Food Waste Through Economics and Data (ReFED) report found inefficiencies at all points along the production chain—from farms tossing out “ugly” produce to grocery stores imprecisely gauging their inventory. But consumers are responsible for the largest share of the waste, at 43 percent of the total.

At the same time, the authors also estimated that customer education campaigns could have a big impact—possibly diverting as much as 584 tons of organic waste from landfills. These would be crucial interventions if the U.S. is to inch closer to meeting the federal goal of halving food waste by 2030.