In the United States alone, roughly 35.3 million tons of food ended up in landfills in 2018, making food the single largest category of material in our everyday trash. That figure accounts for about 24 percent of everything landfilled in the country. Globally, the picture is even more staggering: nearly 2 billion tonnes of food are lost or wasted each year across the supply chain, from farms to household kitchens.
U.S. Food Waste by the Numbers
The EPA estimates that over 63 million tons of food waste were generated across commercial, institutional, and residential sectors in 2018. Of that total, 35.3 million tons went straight to landfills. Only about 4 percent was diverted to composting. The rest was incinerated, sent down sewers, or otherwise discarded outside the food supply chain.
To put that in personal terms, each American sent roughly 328 pounds of food waste into landfills and other disposal pathways in 2016, the baseline year the EPA uses for tracking. That works out to nearly a pound per person per day. The FDA estimates that 30 to 40 percent of the entire U.S. food supply goes to waste, a figure that corresponded to about 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food back in 2010. More recent EPA estimates put the cost to individual consumers at $728 per year, or about $2,913 annually for a family of four.
Where the Waste Comes From
Food waste isn’t just a household problem, though homes are a major contributor. The 63 million tons generated in 2018 came from three broad sectors: residential (your kitchen), commercial (restaurants, grocery stores, food manufacturers), and institutional (schools, hospitals, corporate cafeterias). Households tend to waste food through spoilage, over-purchasing, and plate scraps. Restaurants and grocery stores discard food that doesn’t sell before its date label expires or that fails to meet appearance standards. Institutional kitchens often prepare more food than gets consumed.
Despite some high-profile corporate sustainability programs, the vast majority of this waste still goes to landfills rather than being composted, donated, or converted to animal feed.
The Global Scale
Worldwide, food loss and waste happen at two stages. An estimated 931 million tonnes of food (about 13 percent of all food produced) are lost in the supply chain after harvest but before reaching store shelves. Think of crops that rot during storage, meat that spoils during transport, or grain damaged by pests in warehouses. On top of that, the UN Environment Programme estimated that 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted in 2022 at the household, food service, and retail levels. That’s about 132 kilograms per person globally.
Combined, these losses mean that roughly a third of all food produced for human consumption never gets eaten.
Why Landfilled Food Is an Environmental Problem
Food buried in a landfill doesn’t simply decompose harmlessly. Without oxygen, organic material breaks down anaerobically, producing methane, a greenhouse gas roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The EPA estimates that 58 percent of the methane escaping from municipal landfills into the atmosphere comes specifically from decomposing food waste. That makes landfilled food one of the largest contributors to landfill greenhouse gas emissions.
Zooming out further, global food loss and waste are responsible for approximately 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions each year, roughly 6 percent of all global greenhouse gas output. When you factor in the land-use changes and deforestation driven by growing food that never gets eaten, the total climbs above 4.4 billion tonnes. If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter in the world behind the U.S. and China.
Food waste in landfills also generates leachate, a liquid that forms as rainwater filters through decomposing material. This leachate can carry nutrients, organic acids, and contaminants into surrounding soil and groundwater if landfill liners fail. Food waste decays relatively quickly compared to other landfill materials, with a first-order decay rate of about 0.19 per year, meaning it produces most of its methane and leachate within the first several years after burial.
The U.S. 2030 Reduction Goal
In 2015, the USDA and EPA set a national goal to cut food loss and waste in half by 2030, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12.3. Using the 2016 baseline of 328 pounds of food waste per person, the target is to reach 164 pounds per person by 2030. That goal covers food sent to landfills, incineration, sewers, composting, anaerobic digestion, and land application.
Progress has been slow. The 2030 deadline is approaching, and the amount of food reaching landfills has continued to grow in absolute terms over the past two decades. Landfilled food waste rose from roughly 12.2 million tons in 1997 to 35.3 million tons in 2018, driven by population growth, changing consumption patterns, and limited composting infrastructure. Reaching the 50 percent reduction target would require dramatic expansion of food donation networks, composting and anaerobic digestion facilities, and changes to consumer behavior around meal planning and date labels.
What Drives Household Food Waste
At the consumer level, the biggest drivers are straightforward. People buy more than they can eat before it spoils. Leftovers get pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten. Date labels like “best by” and “sell by” cause confusion, leading people to throw out food that’s still perfectly safe. Produce that looks slightly wilted or bruised gets tossed even though it’s nutritionally fine.
The $728 annual cost per person isn’t just an abstract number. It means the average family of four is essentially throwing away $56 worth of groceries every single week. That’s the equivalent of bagging up one in every three or four grocery bags and dropping it straight into the trash.
Reducing your own contribution doesn’t require radical change. Storing produce properly, freezing leftovers before they spoil, planning meals around what you already have, and understanding that “best by” dates refer to quality rather than safety can meaningfully cut the amount of food that leaves your kitchen in a trash bag and ends up buried in a landfill.