Chatham Climate Action Network
Food Waste and Loss
The inefficiency in our food system is extreme but is it really a significant climate issue???
Yes! Our global food system is enormous and requires huge amounts of natural resources to run. Meanwhile 40% of the potentially edible food it produces is discarded or uneaten! That means 40% of the water, agricultural land, fertilizers, and all the energy currently used for harvesting, shipping, processing, cooling and preparing, from farm to table is also wasted.
On top of that, much of this surplus food ends up in landfills where it then rots and produces methane - a greenhouse gas that causes 80x more warming in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. (To learn more about the importance of immediate and dramatic cuts in methane emissions: Yale Experts Explain Methane Emissions - Yale Sustainability).
Project Drawdown estimates that food loss and waste cause roughly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile 14% of North Carolinians don't have enough to eat.
In response to this, ChathamCAN held a community discussion entitled the Climate Food Puzzle on the intersections of food waste, food loss, food insecurity and climate on October 29th 2024. We learned about four Chatham-based community efforts making significant local impacts on these issues from different angles.
The Climate Food Puzzle Panelists
Shannon Culpepper from Chatham County Environmental Quality and Solid Waste talked about the importance of reducing waste in general (right now Chatham transports all its waste to landfills 45 and 100 miles away) and an upcoming pilot project to introduce community composting in Chatham County. She also shared information from the NC Department of Environmental Quality about how individuals can reduce their food waste: Use the Food.
Susan White, the co-founder of Feed Well Fridges community refrigerator program, shared the story of Feed Well's first year and their enormous success diverting 10,000 pounds of food/month through their 4 community refrigerators. Feed Well partners with most of the grocery stores and restaurants in the county as well as many other community groups. They are in need of a refrigerated truck, more volunteers and hope to have their own space to work out of in the near future. As Susan said, "We don't have a food scarcity problem in this country, we have a food waste problem."
Paula Izquierdo, a volunteer with CORA Food Pantry, shared information about CORA's many programs and ways to support them. CORA has been serving the food insecure in Chatham county for 35 years. Last year it distributed over 1.8 million meals to nearly 13,000 individuals, a 27% increase from the previous year - also diverting that food from the waste stream.
Alesia Bock, a policy specialist with the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, educated us about the FarmShare program that began as a response to farmers' struggles to sell their products during COVID. This creative program built a network of food hubs, farms, and farmer cooperatives to create in-season, locally produced CSA-style food boxes for church ministries that distribute food to food insecure individuals and families. We do not have a FarmShare food hub in Chatham County at this time but hope to in the future.
Key Takeaways from our discussion
Current Local Resources:
We are fortunate in Chatham County to have many resources for addressing food insecurity and food loss and waste right now. These include the following:
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Food diversion efforts: CORA Food Pantry, West Chatham Food Pantry, Chatham Alliance, Feed Well Fridges, and numerous church-based food pantries;
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Composting infrastructure: Brooks Contractor, Compost NOW, Cooperative Extension;
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Informed and engaged personnel in County Solid Waste; and
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Farmer support: RAFI, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, Cooperative Extension, Farmer's Markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CFSA).
Opportunities for Action:
Some opportunities to further address this important issue locally:
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Working on local and state policies that affect food waste (ie. expiration dates, laws about donating food, requiring all retail food businesses to have a food diversion and composting plans, packaging):
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Getting NC Legislature to refund FarmShare program and starting FarmShare hub in Chatham County;
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Organizing to support countywide community composting;
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Organizing Green Schools to start composting on a district level;
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Consumer education campaigns about practices that reduce food waste and increase food access;
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Supporting all local food diversion efforts;
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Broad creative coalitions between farmers, food retailers, and community programs;
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More outreach with different communities, churches.