More than one-third of the food produced in the U.S. is never eaten, ending up instead in landfills, sewers and wastewater treatment facilities, or incinerated.

Food waste is the most common material in American landfills, comprising 24% and 22% of landfilled and combusted municipal solid waste, respectively. This waste is generated by households, food service providers, food retailers, and food manufacturers and processors.

In a 2021 report on the environmental impacts of U.S. food waste, the Environmental Protection Agency states that the amount of surplus food would be enough to feed more than 150 million people each year, more than four times the number of food insecure people living in the U.S. 

Between 70% and 90% of the food wasted in the U.S. is edible, which could go toward feeding people and lessening food insecurity, according to the EPA. The 10% of inedible food loss must be managed through pathways such as composting, anaerobic digestion, or landfill. In addition to redistributing surplus food, solutions must include efforts to prevent the generation of surplus food in the first place, according to the EPA. 

In April 2023, the EPA published another report on where wasted food ends up in the U.S. The EPA relied on multiple existing studies and data to produce their report. 

The EPA estimates that in 2019, 66.2 million tons of wasted food was generated in the food retail, food service, and residential sectors, with nearly 60% ending up in landfills. An additional 40.1 million tons of wasted food was generated by the food manufacturing and processing sectors. The biggest proportion of manufacturing and processing waste (42.6%) was managed by anaerobic digestion, a process that involves bacteria breaking down organic waste in the absence of oxygen. This process produces biogas, which can be used like natural gas. 

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