Depends on the categories you’re looking at and what method of accounting you’re using. If you’re looking just in terms of raw tonnage, the majority happens at the farm/distributor/processor and the grocery store (the EPA puts it at 60/40 upstream/downstream), but the picture is a little bit muddier if you’re tracing protein or calories instead of weight. Grocery stores mainly throw away produce because they build those nice pretty displays to get you into the store but they’re horribly inefficient from a distributional perspective. Meats and other short-shelf-life products are often purchased and brought home, then allowed to go past the expiration date in the fridge, so the preconsumer and postconsumer components are closer to parity on those categories compared to produce. A lot of that waste also comes from wholesalers like Costco because no one is buying $90 worth of salmon in a single shopping trip, but in terms of total volume they’re smaller than grocery stores.
Doesn’t the majority of food waste occur before it’s bought by the consumer?
Depends on the categories you’re looking at and what method of accounting you’re using. If you’re looking just in terms of raw tonnage, the majority happens at the farm/distributor/processor and the grocery store (the EPA puts it at 60/40 upstream/downstream), but the picture is a little bit muddier if you’re tracing protein or calories instead of weight. Grocery stores mainly throw away produce because they build those nice pretty displays to get you into the store but they’re horribly inefficient from a distributional perspective. Meats and other short-shelf-life products are often purchased and brought home, then allowed to go past the expiration date in the fridge, so the preconsumer and postconsumer components are closer to parity on those categories compared to produce. A lot of that waste also comes from wholesalers like Costco because no one is buying $90 worth of salmon in a single shopping trip, but in terms of total volume they’re smaller than grocery stores.