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This article claims that 12 million tons of food are wasted in California annually, and that this law will save 70,000 tons of food from going to waste. Califor

by ggreer 2y ago

This article claims that 12 million tons of food are wasted in California annually, and that this law will save 70,000 tons of food from going to waste. California's population is 39 million. Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me. I'm curious how they came up with those numbers. I think this law is like plastic straw bans, or mandated bag fees, or prop 65 cancer warnings: a feel-good law that causes more problems than it solves. Anyone who makes food for sale in California will have to redo their labelling (or at least pay people to audit their product labelling). These costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of increased prices. Some manufacturers will choose to not sell in California, reducing consumer choice, reducing competition, and increasing prices. And for what? To reduce food waste by 0.6% in the best case. It seems to me that the problem with food wastage isn't the extra food, it's the externalities created by food production, distribution, and disposal. It would be much more effective to tax these externalities than to make ineffective laws about product labelling.

rsynnott 2y ago
> Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me. That seems plausible. Figures vary a bit, but generally you're looking at 20-30% of food in supermarkets ultimately being wasted. An average person eats something like 1.5kg a day, so a pound seems about right. (Of course it's not as simple as that, because there's also wastage at home, and that's very hard to measure.) That said, there's also a lot of wastage by restaurants and other catering operations, and this won't really help there, so the impact may not be as great as people hope.
akira2501 2y ago
My suspicion is that most of the waste is from the commercial sector and not from the residential. Even to the extent that it is just make food garbage separate from other garbage and then compost it directly. There's no reason to see discarded food as "wasted" other than for the fact our processes for managing the obvious consequence of home kitchens are either incomplete or totally missing.
anon84873628 2y ago
The results of plastic bag & straw bans seem quite good to me.

by ggreer 2y ago

rsynnott 2y ago

> Does that mean that every Californian is wasting a pound of food every day? That seems suspiciously high to me. That seems plausible. Figures vary a bit, but generally you're looking at 20-30% of food in supermarkets ultimately being wasted. An average person eats something like 1.5kg a day, so a pound seems about right. (Of course it's not as simple as that, because there's also wastage at home, and that's very hard to measure.) That said, there's also a lot of wastage by restaurants and other catering operations, and this won't really help there, so the impact may not be as great as people hope.

akira2501 2y ago

My suspicion is that most of the waste is from the commercial sector and not from the residential. Even to the extent that it is just make food garbage separate from other garbage and then compost it directly. There's no reason to see discarded food as "wasted" other than for the fact our processes for managing the obvious consequence of home kitchens are either incomplete or totally missing.

anon84873628 2y ago

The results of plastic bag & straw bans seem quite good to me.