Food Waste in Grocery Stores

Food Waste in Grocery Stores
Executive Summary
Prodigious amounts of food are thrown away from grocery stores for various reasons. The dumping, which has soared to dizzying proportions, sounds morally wrong. One is bound to feel morally disturbed considering that millions of people face starvation in the face daily. As such, stringent measures ought to be instituted to stem the aforementioned wasteful trend. However, eradicating the problem can only happen if all entities get a holistic understanding of the factors that cause it. The people involved must have a sound grasp of the dangers associated with food waste. Therefore, the stakeholders must brainstorm to come up with a lasting solution. Stopping the wanton wastage is feasible, and every reasonable step must be taken toward that end. Respective authorities must also be incorporated into the critical process to make major strides towards solving the problem.
Introduction
Many grocery stores have had to grapple with food waste over the years. As such, it would not be a wonder for one to encounter homeless people or vagabonds hovering around grocery stores' dumpsters hoping to grab something edible. Even though many stores take every possible measure to minimize waste, it happens nevertheless, and the amount trashed is jaw-dropping. According to Rauber (2021), grocery stores in the U.S. throw away approximately 3.5 million tons of food every year. These mainly consist of fruit, vegetable, grain, and dairy products (Graphic 1).
Graphic 1- Source: Food System Primer (n.d.)
In addition, grocery stores alongside restaurants and food service companies make up 40% of the total food waste (Graphic 2).
Source of Food Waste

Percentage of Total Food Waste

Homes

43%

Grocery stores, restaurants, food service companies

40%

Farms

16%

Manufacturers

2%

Graphic - Source: RTS (2022)
By all accounts, the food is too much to throw away in a year. It is also regrettable considering that about 50 million people do not know where they will get their next meal at any given time (Rauber, 2021). Therefore, stakeholders must understand what contributes to the unprecedented waste. After that, they should deliberate on how to put the problem under check. The mitigation strategy must be comprehensive to minimize loss as much as possible.
Causes of Food Wastage in Grocery Stores
Factors contributing to food waste in developing countries differ distinctly from those in developed countries. In developing countries, where people experience severe food shortages, wastage mainly occurs due to poor means of transportation and storage (Kawata & Kubota, 2018). Essentially, this means that food products are destroyed by pests primarily due to inadequate air conditioning in food establishments.
In developed countries, on the other hand, wastage largely happens in the distribution and consumption stages. That is because the substantial provision of food products far outweighs consumption. In this regard, and as far as food groceries are concerned, managers are to blame for over-ordering products (Ceryes et al., 2021). Since most food products have a very restricted shelf life, many stores have to trash them when they get past the expiry date. That is mainly attributable to stocking more than can be sold in good time. From the same perspective, many grocery employees are not conversant with ways of determining which foodstuffs to discard or not. Similarly, some employees dump food for fear of causing harm to consumers. In this regard, periodic dumpster inspections reveal that many employees discard edible foodstuffs due to strict policies. In this perspective, the employees tend to use personal intuitions to assess which products are more desirable and salable rather than the standardized criteria (Ceryes et al. 2021). The trend is mainly due to inadequate training.
The other driver of food wastage in grocery stores is the behavior and attitudes of store managers and workers. Some of the metrics they apply are ridiculous, to say the least. For instance, some workers reportedly discard products because they look funny. They also discard goods that they wouldn't buy (Ceryes et al. 2021). In addition, if the employees have questions concerning dumping, they ought to ask managers who are more knowledgeable. However, asking questions largely depend on personal initiative.
Apart from the human factors explored above, food wastage also happens due to environmental factors such as the weather, pandemics, and eating culture. It is worth noting, in this regard, that certain people cannot eat certain foodstuffs in certain weather conditions. For instance, people choose against eating heavy foods during winter as they may interfere with the dig...