Issue Statement

As inflation continues to mark up the food prices in NYC, it is becoming harder for people to afford fresh food. However despite the high costs, at the end of each day, millions of pounds of food are thrown in garbage bags that fill dumpsters and the streets at night.

How can food that is expensive in store shelves and fridges, become trash?

What Is Food Waste?

Food Injustice: Food injustice is a term that describes the structural issues that affect food access, production, and consumption. It is influenced by factors such as unjust policies, racism, corporate consolidation, and social exclusion. It has consequences for the health, well-being, and sovereignty of individuals and communities, especially those who are vulnerable and marginalized. Food justice is a movement that seeks to confront and change the root causes of food injustice and reclaim community control of food.

Food Waste: Food waste is food that is intended for human consumption that is wasted and lost. Food waste can have negative impacts on the environment, economy, and society.

Fun Facts!

- "Each year, about 3.9 million tons of wasted food from New York end up in landfills, where it slowly decays and is a major contributor to methane gas production" - nycfoodpolicy

- "Respondents reported that not enough food was distributed in order to meet current demand. This was reported by 30.4 percent of respondents in the Bronx, 38.1 percent in Brooklyn, 21.6 percent in Manhattan, 24.6 percent in Queens, and 55.6 percent in Staten Island." - nycfoodpolicy

- MORE THAN $1 BILLION PER YEAR SPENT

to manage all solid waste, including $300 million to export 3.3 million tons of City-collected waste.

- 40 PERCENT OF FOOD IN THE US GOES UNEATEN, which, on average, is 400 pounds of food per person every year. This includes wholesome and edible food that is thrown away.

Impact Of Families

Plenty of families in New York waste food but many more don’t get any. Of course, panties are an option for these families to get food however most of them run out of limited supplies of food. “In 2018, food pantries and soup kitchens in all boroughs had to turn people away, reduce food distributed per person, or limit hours because of a lack of resources." - NYCfoodpolicy

Impact Of Enviroment

Food waste isn’t only harmful to people in need of a meal, from the amount of food that gets thrown in landfills, it creates greenhouse gasses which becomes harmful to the air quality that’ll eventually affect the environment's health and soon lead to the damaging of humans health as well. "Food loss and waste also exacerbates the climate change crisis with its significant greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint." - U.S department of Agriculture

Companies Perspective

As much of a waste it is, it’s not worth getting sued over since if they accidentally give away spoiled food it could cause them some legal problems which is something that they'd want to avoid at all costs. It's also the fact that it costs more to properly organize workers to drop off the donations at places that need them especially since they won't be profiting off of it.