Essay by Eric Worrall

“… It is nearly impossible for the globe to meet … the Paris Accords without reducing waste from the food system …”

Food waste is a major contributor to climate change. What are the solutions?

by Christine Clark, University of California – San Diego
APRIL 17, 2025

…

“It is nearly impossible for the globe to meet emissions targets set forth by the Paris Accords without reducing waste from the food system,” said Robert Sanders, an assistant professor of marketing and analytics at the Rady School of Management who is one of the world’s top experts on this issue. …

For example, policymakers and scholars have a hypothesis that 7–10% of all food waste stems from confusion about the meaning of expiration-date-label formats (e.g., “best by” vs. “use by”). California even passed a law (AB 660) on the basis of these claims about these date labels, hoping to motivate people to not dispose of food that’s safe to eat, but there’s still no scientific evidence of how these date-label formats actually affect purchases and waste in the field—that is, when real choices are made.

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The other solution I investigate is dynamic pricing. More than 10% of food waste comes from grocery retailers that throw out surplus perishables past their expiration date.

Dynamic pricing spurs retailers to throw out less food by applying an algorithm that determines when grocery stores should reduce the price of perishables depending on their inventory and expiration date. This way, vendors can change the price of food multiple times a day, compared to static pricing in which products have the same price all day. It also makes perishables, which are less processed and generally healthier, more affordable.

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Read more: https://phys.org/news/2025-04-food-major-contributor-climate-solutions.html

My biggest problem with this article, is like all green initiatives, it is an attack on freedom. if I want to let cucumbers go rotten in my refrigerator, that is my god given right to do so. I like cucumber salad – but not all the time. If I purchase cucumbers just in case I want cucumber salad, that is freedom to choose – I can choose to use the cucumbers, or I can choose to eat something else.

Imagine a world where you have to eat stale but technically edible food, to avoid a financial penalty – or where buying those cucumbers is a commitment to eat them. This would amount to state enforced poverty on the middle class – people would no longer be free to change their minds about what they wanted to eat.

I doubt the elites have any intention of eating the out of date food they would force on the peasants in the name of climate action. They can always eat at expensive restaurants like The French Laundry if they want to sample the good life, regardless of what is in their refrigerator at home.

As for grocery stores discounting out of date produce, perhaps the professor should have looked a little closer. In my part of the world at least, premium grocery stores rarely throw out perishables, they begin a second life in discount stores, only succumbing to time when they perish so much not even poor people want them. I’m pretty sure California is no different, I remember seeing a discount section in the West Hollywood grocery store I visited many years ago.